


Error 404 Mercy Not Found

by LMT



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series)
Genre: Rule 34 is real, This is not quite crack but almost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:27:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 26,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27592025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LMT/pseuds/LMT
Summary: Johnny knows that the old All-Valley videos are all online.  He knows not to read the comments about his.  But then he learns that there is something worse out there: fanfiction.(The one where Johnny and Daniel discover RPF about themselves and have to deal with it.).   NOW COMPLETE!
Relationships: Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence
Comments: 447
Kudos: 306





	1. Chapter 1

There was a commotion outside his office door. “I’m going to tell him.” Hawk.

“Hawk – no!” Miguel. Sounding desperate. “Come on – either he knows or he doesn’t. There’s no reason to- Hawk seriously-…”

The door burst open. Hawk knocked afterwards.

Johnny could respect that. Fine. He took his feet off the desk and put down his beer. “Yes?”

Hawk bowed in. “Sensei. I want to tell you something – in case you don’t already know this. Maybe you do.”

“There’s no way he knows already.” Miguel, behind him, shook his head. “I can’t be part of this. Oh my god. Bye, guys.” And he disappeared.

Hmm. Maybe this was important. Johnny stood. “Tell me what?”

Hawk spoke up without any hesitation. “So: you know that the video of you and LaRusso is online, right? The finals from back in the day. You know that, right? It’s online, and people watch it.”

“Yeah.” He had seen the video. And he had learned not to look at the comments, because they always made him want to fight people but _none_ of the people who posted comments were ever willing to meet him and get their asses kicked. It made him hate the internet. “I’m not embarrassed about that match. It was a good match, up until that last kick – which was illegal,” he added, as always. “What’s the problem? Is someone talking shit about it?”

“No. It’s not that.” Hawk licked his lips. He looked nervous, like he thought Johnny was maybe going to kill him, but also kind of excited. “Do you know what Rule 34 is?”

* * *

**TBC.**


	2. Chapter 2

Johnny frowned. “I don’t think the rules had numbers in the 80’s. But kicks were definitely not allowed where-”

“No no no,” Hawk interrupted. “Not a karate rule. Rule 34.”

He shook his head.

Hawk drew himself up and took on a distinctly nerdy, un-Hawklike tone. “Okay, so, Rule 34 is a principle stating that if a concept exists… if it can be imagined… then somewhere on the internet there is porn about it.” He paused, like a teacher. “So for example: a unicorn with, I dunno, a rainbow mane and male genitalia – can you imagine that?” Unfortunately, he could. “Then there’s porn about it out there somewhere. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs bukkake? Out there. Librarian using the book return slot as a gloryhole? _Definitely_ out there. Someone on the internet has written, drawn, or filmed it.” He cocked his head. “Probably all three. Anyway. Yeah.”

Johnny tried not to flinch like an old person, but Hawk had pretty much lost him at _Seven Dwarfs bukkake_ and he was still trying hard to unthink that thought _._ He swallowed. “Yeah, okay.” He managed a tone of irritation. “I get it.”

“You get it?” Hawk asked with eyebrows. “Really? There’s a _video of you and LaRusso on the internet,_ Sensei. The concept is out there. So that means that under Rule 34…” he made a circular gesture, like it was Johnny’s turn to finish the thought.

It was like getting called on by teacher, about a reading you haven’t done. “You mean- are, are you saying…”

“Mm-hm…” Hawk encouraged.

“That there’s…? That somebody made… _porn_ …?”

“Yep.” He brought a hand from behind his back and he was holding papers. “And I found it.”

Johnny stared.

“I printed it out for you, cause I know you’re trash with the computer, no offense.” He held it out. “But this is on the internet. Someone watched your video, wrote a story, and posted it on a fanfiction site as RPF. Real-person fiction,” he explained. “They’ve got your name and everything.”

Johnny took the stack. “ _Final Round,_ ” he read aloud. “ _It was his fourth All-Valley championship and he could not believe it was ending this way. Johnny Lawrence crawled off the mat because he was too dizzy to stand-_ What the hell!” He looked up. “That’s not true!”

“Oh- oh _please_.” Hawk was laughing. “You have no idea. They have you moping in the locker room…” he pointed partway down the page. “Coming back out to find the place deserted except for LaRusso, who’s apparently too big a pussy to handle crowds and wanted to _savor a quiet moment at the site of his triumph..._ ”

“ _-…Staring up at his own name,_ ” Johnny read aloud. “ _What – you gonna jack off to that bracket now?_ ” He frowned – it was actually something he might say.

“Yeah, they did get your voice pretty close. Somebody really put effort into this.” And he added, a second too late when Johnny had already started turning the page: “They even did illustrations.”

He stared down at the drawing. It was like one of those Japanese cartoons where everybody’s chin is pointy and their hair has spikes. _Anime_! His shellshocked brain pulled the word out of somewhere; it might be right; he wasn’t nerd enough to know. 

Anime(?)-Johnny was grabbing the smaller anime(?) kid, which was indeed visibly and obviously meant to be LaRusso, by the hair. Bending him backwards, forcing him down. And even though it was a bright little drawing that looked like it was supposed to be part of a cutesy cartoon… between his smirk and LaRusso’s helplessness the whole thing came across _dirty_. The gis were too open, the position too close. LaRusso a little too girly.

“Uh,” he said. He actually felt heat in his cheeks – he was _blushing._ In front of a _student._ (Hawk, of all people. It couldn’t be worse.).

Hawk was laughing nervously. “Listen – if you think _that’s_ weird, then maybe I should give you a heads-up that the rest is super graphic dubcon. Do you know what that-…”

Too late. He had already turned the page.

“-…Means?”

* * *

**TBC?**

**So, thanks for developing ideas on this, guys!**

**Note: I have now put the lawrusso ship tag on this story because it *is* going to incorporate graphic lawrusso content, in the form of the story they're discussing, and also some sliiiight shippy stuff present-day. That won't be til towards the end though.**


	3. Chapter 3

The drawing was flat-out disturbing. It was LaRusso on his knees, chest on the floor and both arms stretched out in front of him, grasping at nothing. His eyes were wide and panicked, and the jagged speech bubble said: _No no wait- **AAH!**_

And anime-Johnny was looming over the kid from behind, face shadowed and villainous, jagged grin, muscles bulging.

It made him a little queasy, to see himself drawn like that, so he turned the page to get away from it.

…Failing to consider, until too late, that there would probably be another picture on the next page.

This one had a decidedly different feel. Unlike the violent one, which had been stark black-and-white, this one was soft colored and soft in tone. It was still disturbing though. LaRusso was still getting banged. This time kneeling upright, naked save for a wide-open gi top hanging off his shoulders, with an oversized erection leaking against his belly. He was reaching up and back with one arm, sort of hugging behind him, mouth open again but face no longer screwed up. _Yeah-_ the speech bubble said, _Like that, Johnny. **Do it!**_

He stared at his own name. That was bad, but it was still preferable to looking at his avatar _,_ which no longer looked evil but was instead nosing against LaRusso’s hair with its eyes closed. One arm was around LaRusso’s chest and the other hand spread over the front of his hip – but not digging into the flesh like in the previous picture. This one looked like a porno rather than a crime – and he wasn’t sure which was worse.

“Jesus,” he said aloud. “What the actual fuck.”

“I told you.” Hawk was snickering a little, but it sounded nervous.

And no wonder. This was unreal. He took a deep breath, steeling himself to turn the last page, but before he could Hawk jumped in. “Wait. The last picture is really cringe and gross. Get ready.”

He looked down at the monster cartoon dick of the cartoon rival his cartoon self was cartoon-assfucking. (Didn’t even try, yet, to read any of the text. The pictures were bad enough.). “Worse than this?”

“Well I mean-… you’ll see.” Hawk waited expectantly.

Expecting him not to chicken out. He couldn’t disappoint.

He turned the page, and immediately winced. “Cringe is right, man” he said. This time he was giving the little twerp what was obviously a post-coital _cuddle_ , hand on his stupid fucking _knee,_ and there was bright pink cartoon _blush_ on his cartoon cheeks. “That _is_ totally gross. I only cuddle chicks hot enough to bang a second time and _that_ obviously does not qualify. Jesus.”

“I know, right?” Hawk sounded a lot more comfortable now that he was finding his groove again. “Euw. At least they had you wreck his shit first. But still.”

The kid did look _wrecked_ in the last picture, but not in the sense Johnny would normally mean it. He shuffled the papers back to the first page. Finally got enough of a handle on himself to go on offense. “How the hell did you even find this, anyway? What were you doing – searching for karate porn?”

Hawk was obviously caught off guard by the aggression. He wasn’t ready to answer and just shrugged, mutinous. “Maybe. So what?”

“ _So what?_ ” (Karate porn? How had he never known that that was a thing? _Not_ that he would ever take a look.). “What are you doing searching for porn anyway – you have a girlfriend, right? Porn is for when you _can’t_ get babes.”

“Or to give you ideas what to do when you _do_ have babes.” He glanced down to the stack of awfulness. “Not that I’m gonna do anything like that though. This isn’t my scene. I found this by total accident.”

Which brought another horrible thought. “You better not have jacked off to it.”

Hawk looked properly horrified. “No _way_ , Sensei!” he insisted, fierce. “I would _never_ jack off to a loser like LaRusso. Hot chicks and badass dudes _only_. I promise.”

His brain was revving back up enough to read between the lines on that, which was unfortunate because he definitely did not want to know what he now knew. Still. He pushed that thought aside and focused. “And nobody else here better be jacking off to it either.” The command was the closest he could come to asking _Who else did you tell about this??_ , which he wanted to do but couldn’t because it sounded like he gave a shit what these loser kids thought about him, which he did _not_.

“Understood, Sensei.” Hawk grinned. “We wouldn’t. We were just laughing about it. It’s pretty nuts.”

“Mm.” While he absolutely wanted to forget that the thing even existed, he also kind of wanted to know what the hell the story _said_ – the pictures gave a pretty good idea, but the idea didn’t make any sense. “Well, thank you for bringing it to my attention,” he said formally. “If this is out there I should know about it. And I’m keeping it,” he added. “So I don’t have to go messing around the internet looking.” Not that he even knew how to look for shit like this. Not that he was ever going to learn.

“Yeah, totally. It’s yours.”

Of course it was. It had his _name_ all over it. He was still having trouble processing that. This was going to require a lot of alcohol and a lot of time. 

He figured he’d better get started. “Okay. Out.”

* * *

**TBC.**

**FYI, the fictional fic is not quite as bad as the illustrations would suggest. The text in question will end up in here someplace.**

**I’m not sure yet whether Daniel is going to hear about it through the kids’ grapevine, or whether Johnny is going to tell him directly. But I’m sure he’s going to flip out either way. :-)**


	4. Chapter 4

Miss Robinson was one of his first and one of his toughest, and she almost never wasted his time. So, when she came to him and said she had a question he let her in – and when she admitted it was about that _story_ he still didn’t throw her out.

He was annoyed though; he had been hoping it was near to blowing over. It had been three weeks and the looks and the giggling in class had mostly stopped – except when he slipped up and said something that reminded them. He’d actually had to reread the thing and study well enough to learn his lines, so that he knew what phrases to avoid. (No more telling people that _practice makes perfect._ No more psyching someone up by telling him to _wreck_ the opponent. And he had to say _too much tension_ now, because telling people that they had to _relax_ was totally off the table.).

But Miss Robinson didn’t deserve to get her head bitten off for that, so he just gave her eyebrows and asked wearily: “What about it?”

She sighed. “Sam found out. Sam LaRusso. Some idiots showed it to her.”

He could see how that would be awful, but it wasn’t his fault and it wasn’t like there was anything he could _do._ “Tough shit. There’s no way to erase it from your mind. Believe me, I’ve tried. The hangover almost killed me.”

That made her laugh, but only for a second. Something was actually upsetting her. “No I know, it’s not that. Sam can live with it – she’ll have to. It’s her dad. We just… we don’t know what to do. She feels like she has to tell him.”

He thought of the scene with Hawk in his office and chuckled. “Yeah... that’s gonna suck.”

“Sensei. It’ll be worse than suck,” she said, severe and disappointed. “Think about it. Think about _him_ – he’s so uptight, he’s so obsessed with his _image_ – when we were messing around at a restaurant or something, it would be _Samantha you are **embarrassing me**!_ Like that was the ultimate sin.”

Her impression was pretty spot-on; he could picture LaRusso snarling it exactly like that. But he still didn’t see where this was going. “Okay - so?”

“So, we think he’s going to seriously freak out. Like, maybe have an actual breakdown. And I didn’t want Sam to have to be in the middle of that.” She took a breath. “So I told her I’d do it for her. I said I’ll tell him, so she doesn’t have to.” And she waited.

He looked her up and down. Her posture was tight and nervous. “So… what do you want, a bodyguard? He’s not going to _do_ anything to you.” She gave him more disappointed-teacher scowling. “He’s not. He’s not like that. Anyway if he does you could probably take him; he’s old and he has a bad knee.”

“Sensei.”

“What?”

“ _Seriously?_ ”

“Seriously what?” Now he was starting to get annoyed – she _never_ did this to him. “I’m not one of your woke girlfriends, Miss Robinson. I don’t know what you’re getting at, and I don’t do guessing games. If you want something, you need to ask for it.”

She frowned even deeper. Hissed out a long breath. “Fine.” Finally muttered, like a sulky little _girl_ : “I’m just wondering if there’s any chance you’ll take this bullet for me. Any chance. Please?”

He didn’t follow. “Sorry – what?”

“ _Ugh._ Seriously?” She stood up tall and finally made sense. “I'm asking will _you_ tell Mr. LaRusso about the stupid story? That way I won’t have to. It’s going to be _so_ awkward, and he’ll never look at me the same way again, and _Sam_ will probably never look at me again either, after I talk about _that_ with her _dad_ , and I just _can’t._ I mean I can, but I really don’t want to. Really don’t. You’re at least a grownup, and a guy. Is there any chance _you_ can break the news instead?”

She’d said it all in a rush, babbling like she was _scared_. That was unacceptable. “Take a breath, Miss Robinson.”

She did. Now her cheeks had flushed – she was embarrassed. Well she _should_ be, acting like this.

It was time to set a good example of being embarrassment-proof. “Basically, you want me to call up Daniel LaRusso and tell him that he and I star in a nasty porno together and all our students know about it, and then try and contain the fallout when he goes nuclear.” He stood up.

She nodded. He could see her starting to hope. “Yeah, pretty much.”

He shrugged. “Fine, I can do that. That’s no problem. What _is_ a problem,” he said firmly, “is all _this._ ” Gesturing to _her,_ to her whole attitude. “All this whiny, girly crap. Get out there and give me twenty. Good ones, _perfect_ ones, no cheating. And then I’ll make the call.”

* * *

**TBC.**

**Sorry we didn't get to see Daniel wig yet - we will. He is legit going to wig.**


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: Long one this time! Cause Daniel had a lot of freaking out to do.**

* * *

Miss Robinson had given his own lecture back to him, about how _no mercy_ didn’t mean you should be purposely cruel for no reason, and he had promised to keep it in mind.

So, he started off politely, confirmed that LaRusso was by himself, and then explained with no extra drama: “Hey, so, I’m calling because there’s something you should know about on the internet. Apparently someone who watched our competition video from ’84 thought we were hot, I guess, because, they went and wrote a story about us - a porno story, pretty nasty. It’s even got illustrations. It’s got our names all over it and it’s out there on the internet, and like, I know how uptight you are about your _image_ , so, I thought you might want to know.”

Silence. Then: “Is this some kind of _joke_?”

Johnny laughed. “No, jokes are supposed to be funny. This is just some bullshit on the internet. Check it out.” He read off the URL, twice, and waited.

And waited.

Finally there was a strangled gasp. “Oh- oh god. _No._ No that’s-. Oh _God._ ”

He chuckled. With his mouth closed, because he was trying to be humane, but it was still kind of funny to hear LaRusso losing his cool in real time. “What, are you seeing the pictures now? You might not want to look at the-”

Gasp.

“-Second one. Or third. Or fourth, actually. Though they did draw you with a big dick at least.” He could hear LaRusso gasping, whimpering, like this was so embarrassing as to be physically painful. “Stop looking at it, bro. I can tell you what it’s about if you really want to know. Which you probably don’t,” he added. “Cause it’s I make you my bitch and you love it.” He winced and mentally apologized to Miss Robinson; some habits were hard to shake. He heard more clicking. He waited – it _was_ a lot to absorb. Hawk had definitely let him take his time.

LaRusso finally managed words other than _oh god_ and _no._ It was, airy and breathless: “How could you do this?”

He had not expected that. “Do this?” he repeatedly stupidly. “Me? I didn’t do this! Are you crazy?”

“ _How could you do this!?_ ”

“LaRusso! I can’t draw. I don’t write. And I would never, _ever_ want to imagine anything like this. What the hell is the matter with you?”

“Oh my god. Oh my _god_. This is on the _internet_ …”

“Yeah. I know. The kids have all seen it. But I told them they’re forbidden to use it for jacking off.”

He thought he was being, in general, pretty good here. But LaRusso didn’t answer, except for a rasping sound that was loud and steady enough to be a machine, but was actually the sound of a person wheezing too fast to take in air. He had seen it a couple of times, back in the day, when someone caught a too-hard kick in the head.

“Hey. LaRusso. You still there? You gotta breathe, man.”

The sound hitched, then continued. 

It turned out to be extremely disconcerting to stay on the line with someone who was flipping out, to listen with no way to take action. “Look, you, uh… you need me to come over there?”

Finally LaRusso answered. “I don’t know,” he gasped. “I can’t.”

Can’t _what?_

He flashed back to the story. _Nuh-uh – I can’t._ Cursed the writer for being able to read their respective minds so well – LaRusso was going to have to learn to panic in some other vocabulary from now on.

Anyway. “Aright, I’m coming over. Is anybody else home?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Fine. Your front door better be open or I’m kicking it in.”

* * *

He would have thought the bedroom was empty, if he didn’t hear LaRusso hyperventilating from somewhere. A little quieter now, but not much.

“Hey. It’s me. You here?”

He heard movement by the far side of the bed. Went to investigate, and found LaRusso on the floor, huddled against the nightstand.

“You still not okay?”

That got a head-shake. At least the guy wasn’t too out of it to answer questions. Okay – he could work with this.

“Is that your bathroom?” he said, pointing. He headed in and found the wife’s Valium and brought a couple with a glass of water. “Hey. Here.”

LaRusso gave him a look that was both bewildered and accusing.

“What? I grew up in a house just like this. Of course I know where they keep the chill pills.”

LaRusso swallowed them with water and continued to cower on the ground. Eventually his breathing slowed, and after maybe ten minutes of silence he finally croaked: “What do we _do_?”

“Just try and forget it, I guess. Wait for it to blow over.”

“We can’t just leave it on the internet!” he almost shrieked it. Scrambled around on his knees and grabbed at Johnny’s pants, his wrist, anything he could reach to help leverage himself to his feet. “It’s _there right now_! Every second we don’t get it taken down, someone else could be _seeing it_!”

“Yeah, I know how the internet works.” Johnny leaned back, hands behind him. The LaRussos had a great bed. “But we can’t take it down. Hawk said only the author can take it down.”

“Then we write to the author. We can-, we can, we can threaten legal action.” He whirled and started pacing. “It can’t be legal to take someone’s name, their image, and, and say these _things_ -”

“You really want to go to court about this?” He kicked idly against the carpet. “Exhibit A, Your Honor: picture of Daniel LaRusso with his dick out. Exhibit-”

“Shut up! Shut your mouth!”

“All right, all right.” He shook his head. “We’re not going to court, man. We just lay low. It’s like when a celebrity sex tape gets leaked – everyone talks about it for a while, and then they forget.” He was actually starting to feel _bad_. “Look, it’s no big deal – I wouldn’t have even told you, except you were going to find out _some_ time and how much worse would it be if someone, like, marched up to you in the middle of class and handed you a printout. Which is what they did to me.”

He told it that way to leave the daughter out, and maybe earn some sympathy points too, but LaRusso seemed to not even hear him. “Fine – no legal action then, but we can still _ask._ The author will take it down if we ask. I mean, come on. Right?”

He thought about it. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “There’s a karate perv out there somewhere jerking it to the thought of Daniel LaRusso begging for mercy. And what you want to do is call him up and _actually_ _beg_? He is going to come so hard it’s gonna splash you through the phone line. And then he’s going to write a whole nother story about it.”

LaRusso shuddered, visibly, and slid down the wall to sit on the floor again, almost too fast to be intentional. He hugged his knees and hid his face. “This can’t be happening.”

“Yeah, well, it is. Sorry.” He was shit at comforting people. Himself, all he would do was drink and wait for things to get better.

That wouldn’t work here, so instead he came over and crouched down, and put a hand on LaRusso’s neck. (He shouldn’t be sitting like that. Exposing your neck made you vulnerable. As if the cowering and freaking out wasn’t already bad enough. How could he _be_ like this?). He thought of a couple things to say, and ran through them in his mind to make sure they weren’t polluted like _just relax_ before speaking them aloud. “Take it easy,” he said, “Just get it together and we’ll figure something out.” 

There. Miss Robinson couldn’t complain that he hadn’t tried.

* * *

**TBC.**

**The thing I’m giggling hardest about here is how Daniel’s outlook is “hey, if I just talk to people and tell them my side, they’ll agree with me and give me what I want.” And Johnny’s is “unknown person? Probably enemy. Anything you tell them is a weapon for them to use against you.”**

**I’m not 100% sure where this story is going, but if it’s where I think… they are both going to end up pretty wrong.**


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: I didn’t check if the fictional author handle mentioned here is actually used by anybody. If it is, I apologize! No intention to represent anybody real here.**

**Also, we finally get Daniel POV for this one, cause I wanted to get up close and personal with his freakout :-)**

* * *

Oddly enough, what brought his mind fully back online was Johnny Lawrence plopping down onto his bed and saying uncertainly: “You… want some tea or something?”

He looked up. Felt himself smile. “Tea?”

Johnny ran a hand through his hair impatiently. “Yeah, I dunno. Tea. Or whatever your girly little ass drinks to chill out. Personally I’d want alcohol. But I can’t make a fancy martini, so…”

He waited for the rush of antagonism that Johnny usually woke, but it didn’t come.

Right – Valium.

Or maybe something else, he reflected as he got unsteadily to his feet. Johnny had stood over him solid and reassuring, and _silent_ for once, for the entire time he worked at pulling himself together.

He focused on the question. “I doubt you can make tea either, and this is my house, so I’ll make the drinks. What do you want?”

Now that he’d risen, Johnny was looking up at _him_. “And, Danny LaRusso is back in the building.”

“Shut up,” he said, without heat. “Just… let’s…” he made a calm-down gesture. “Let’s go downstairs.” On the way down he found himself talking to fill the silence. “We have beer here, don’t worry. Not that garbage _you_ drink though.” He still felt a little slow, a little thick, a little dazed. 

“I’ll drink any garbage you have, at this point.”

It seemed like the moment when he should apologize for melting down, but he wasn’t sure yet that the meltdown was over and he wasn’t sure what to say about it anyway, so he kept quiet.

He did make himself tea. The process was calming, even more than the drink. Johnny finished an entire beer before his cup was ready, and then helped himself to another one. “Try not to get drunk, okay?”

The beer opened anyway. “Who’s still this uptight after popping pills?”

“I dunno,” he snapped, “Maybe a guy with a very serious, very distressing problem with no obvious solution and a goddamn wiseass getting drunk in his kitchen!” Well. There went his calm.

Johnny paused, bottle already to his lips, and then lowered it. Held it out in offering, with raised eyebrows.

“No. Thanks.”

Johnny held it out more forcefully. Alcohol probably _would_ do him good, so this time he snatched it and took a long gulp.

Too long, too sudden. He burped as he handed it back.

Johnny was biting on a smile he didn’t understand. “What?” he snarled.

“Good, right?”

“Yeah, it’s good. Beer’s fine. So what? What…?”

“That karate perv has your number, man.”

It took a second to understand that. He flashed unwillingly back to _those pictures_ , and then to Johnny’s crude recap. _I make you my bitch and you love it._

“Sorry,” Johnny said, almost right away. “I get it. Too soon.”

 _Too soon?_ Like it would _ever_ be-… Anger swamped him and he put his drink down, came around the counter.

Johnny climbed off his stool quick, and backed away with fists up. “Happy to fight if you want to, LaRusso, but you’re gonna get beat bad. Look at you.”

He made himself take a breath. Thought of Amanda talking them down, right out that door there. _I kinda don’t want to get blood on the patio._ She was right; whaling on each other was not a solution to anything. He tried to do better. Gestured to stand down and Johnny did. “Look. We can at least find out who the author is. Write to them. Politely. Not begging. Just… make a request.”

“Or _not_ politely,” Johnny suggested. “Maybe they live right here in town. If we find out who it is we could drag him out back and _make_ him take it down.” He was warming to the idea. “That would be kind of badass, like something from a gangster movie.”

He couldn’t tell if Johnny was kidding. He wasn’t sure he’d object if not. “Well either way, the first step is finding out who the author is, and how to contact them.”

“Kick and tell,” Johnny said.

“What?

“The author’s name. It’s _KickAndTell,_ all one word.”

“Okay. Let’s look for an email address.”

* * *

So ten minutes later they were sitting side by side at the desk in Daniel’s study, laptop open, jockeying for position to see the tiny screen as it booted up. “Move over, LaRusso. Why is your computer so fucking small?” He tipped back his beer. (His third!). “If you could take it I’d make a dick joke right now, but obviously you can’t, so.” He raised his bottle, toasting nothing. “You’re welcome, Miss Robinson. I’m being humane.”

He glared over. “Can you _please_ take this seriously?”

“I’m in your goddamn _house_ ,” he pointed out, “Listening to you bitch at me, when I can think of at least ten other place I’d rather be. Including fixing my dojo’s blocked toilet. So why don’t you just shut up and get us on the internet?”

“I am. What’s the URL again?” He’d dropped his phone in horror earlier; it was somewhere on the bedroom floor.

Johnny took out a folded-up set of papers, creased and curled from repeated handling, and read it off.

He couldn’t take his eyes off the papers. He could see the edges of one of _those drawings_ peeking out. “You… printed it out?”

“Huh? No. No, I told you – this is how I got it. The kids actually handed me these papers and made me look at it.” He drank. “At least you got to have your freakout in private.”

They were pressed shoulder-to-shoulder and Johnny was belching beer fumes in his face. This was hardly private.

Still. There was a silver lining to having company here: he didn’t actually have to look. “Find the author name and click on it,” he ordered, turning the screen away from himself. “See if there’s an email address or something.”

Johnny navigated awkwardly for a few minutes. “No,” he said finally. “But there’s a button for comments, so we might be able to leave the guy a message that way.”

He steeled himself. “Let me see. _Just_ the comments button,” he added. “Don’t show me the rest.”

Johnny sat back in his chair. “You need to chill out a little. It’s not _that_ bad.”

“It’s a-… a _violent gay rape fantasy_ ,” he hissed. “About _me_. How is that _not that bad?_ ”

“Actually no, Hawk said there’s another word for it - something foreign, I forget. It’s like when the person _sort of_ says no, but sort of yes, and then you do it anyway and it’s okay. Apparently on the internet that’s not a problem. So relax. Nobody’s raping anybody.”

“Oh, of course, that’s fine then,” he spat. _On the internet._ His skin was _crawling_ because this was _still out there_ , and the longer they sat here…

“Okay. I’m going to figure out the comment thing, okay? In the meantime…” And he held out his papers, all rolled up. “How about a little light reading?”

* * *

Ten minutes later, they were back at the desk, sitting farther apart. Johnny had an ice pack on his cheek, and a new beer. Daniel was sitting off to the side, with the papers actually _in his hand,_ because as much as he hated it he knew he really should at least skim over the thing, so that he would know what the hell he was talking about when they made contact with this guy.

“Skip the first part,” Johnny ordered from behind the laptop. “I look like a pussy.”

So he read it right away. “Aww,” he purred, “Poor Johnny’s in the locker room all alone and his throat’s thick and his reflection is blurry – he’s _crying_. Poor guy. Boo hoo.”

Johnny snorted. “Please. I can cry. It’s the hiding in the locker room bullshit that’s pathetic.”

Getting Johnny wrong felt like losing points in the eternal competition between them; he scowled and turned back to the story.

**_Time passes, apparently, because when he finally pulls it together and grabs his bag and heads out, the gym is deserted. Like, completely deserted._ **

**_… Except for LaRusso._ **

He looked up. “Don’t worry, I think the tragic locker room interlude was just a plot device to get us alone. If one of us comes off as a pussy in this thing, it’s not you.”

Johnny didn’t take his eyes off the screen. “Are you going to do a breakdown of the whole story? At least skip the detailed description of your asshole.”

He choked.

At that, Johnny popped up. “Relax – I’m kidding,” he assured. Disappeared behind the screen again. “…It’s not _that_ detailed. You can read it to me if you want.”

He had promised not to throw any more punches. Promised.

“Oh- hey! Look at this.” Johnny cleared his throat. “The comments are: _Hot. Omg they’re adorable – AND hot._ This one’s _Woooo, hot._ Then one says _Soooo hottttt,_ with lots of O’s on the _so_ and lots of T’s on the _hot._ ” He laughed. “These people like us a _lot._ How much do you think they’d pay us to…?” he peeked above the screen again to pop his eyebrows.

“Stop. Grow up. Jesus.” He looked down at the papers again.

_**He definitely had vague ideas that you were supposed to relax for this, but that’s a laugh. His entire body is tight with the effort of enduring it. (Who the hell does this for fun?).** _

He wasn’t sure which was worse – the story itself, or Johnny over there snickering about the comments from people who had read it.

“This one says _Fanning myself,_ with a lot of little pictures of fire,” said Johnny in real life.

 _ **“Hold on – I’m putting more vaseline and trying again,”** _said Johnny in the story.

Okay, the story was definitely worse.

“Hey – whoa,” Johnny said suddenly. “Look at this – the author responded to somebody. That means he _does_ read the comments.”

“What did he say?”

“The comment is: _They were hot as clueless kids, it would be so cool if they got together later too_. And then, the author wrote back: _LOL. Found pics and they still look good. Maybe I’ll write something else – a modern-day PWP._ ”

“What’s PWP?”

Johnny shook his head. “I don’t know. Want me to look it up? I know how to do google.”

“Yeah. No!” he realized, a second later. “What if it’s something disgusting – I don’t want it showing up in my search history.”

They stared helplessly at each other. Johnny broke first. “I mean… if he’s going to write something else…”

Daniel snorted. “Yeah, _now_ you’re on board with stopping this guy. You’re just afraid you’ll be the girl next time.”

“Please. It’s called _bottoming,_ and it’s fine.” He was talking kind of absently, busy on his phone, and Daniel could only stare. Did he _hear_ that right? “I’m calling Hawk,” Johnny announced. “He can tell us what all this shit means.”

* * *

TBC.

**Okay, so I may be losing my grip on where we are going next lol. But it looks like we are eventually going to end up in the sack. I’ll fix the rating/tags/etc if and when that happens.**

**Once again THANK YOU GUYS for commenting on this. Cracks me up, gives me life, and this fic would definitely have not ballooned like this without it!** **😊**


	7. Chapter 7

This day, already one of his worst in recent memory, had gotten worse still. Now instead of mortification in front of _only_ Johnny Lawrence, it was becoming mortification in front of Johnny plus one of his students – the sneering punk in a mohawk who Daniel was never, ever going to forgive.

“Hawk. My man. You have time to answer a couple questions?”

“Emergency tech support at your service, Sensei.”

(He forbid himself from feeling jealous – or from softening at all towards the kid, even though he didn’t sound like a punk now.).

“Okay. You’re on speaker. Actually – I’m putting on the face call.” And just like that, there he was. “Okay. I’m at LaRusso’s. We’re looking at that stupid porno story, and there’s some people writing nerdspeak in the comments. We need translation. Help us out?”

The kid straightened up a little. The crop of his phone camera meant you couldn’t see much of his hair; he looked largely normal now. Although, seeing his face up close for the first time, no distractions and no sneering, Daniel did notice a big facial scar. Suddenly the hair made a lot more sense. “You got it, Sensei. One sec, I’ll pull it up.”

He winced. “That’s okay, you don’t have to do that. We can just tell you.”

Daniel spoke up. “No – let him. That way we don’t have to read anything to him. For God’s sake.” If Johnny started saying any of it out loud – he could already hear it – he was going to flee the room. _Nah, you’re okay, look at you. Tight as hell, but you’re okay._

Johnny glanced over to him and nodded. “Yeah, good point.” Then he turned his attention back to the phone. “And listen up, Hawk. Like I said, LaRusso’s here right now and he’s listening. Per Miss Robinson’s request, we are not torturing him today. You want to make fun, you do that on your own time. Clear?”

“Yes, Sensei.” The phone shifted a little. “HI, MR. LARUSSO!”

Daniel grimaced. “Hi… Hawk.” Ridiculous. The boy was _ridiculous_.

But Johnny didn’t seem to notice the strain in his voice or any of the eye-rolling. He settled in his chair like he was satisfied, and got started. “So. We’re looking at the comments. I _know_ , I know, don’t read the comments. But we are. It looks like the author said a couple of things, including that he might write another story. So we want to understand what’s going on there.”

The kid’s face turned; Daniel could see from the light moving that he had a computer screen up and was scrolling. “Yup – I saw that,” he said while he read. “There’s a couple people talking about you guys in present day, asking the author to do a sequel. Like…” He hunted a moment and found: “ _You should definitely do it. Daniel’s a cute nerdy DILF now in his car commercials. And Johnny’s got a hot mugshot.”_

“What’s a DILF?” Daniel asked, at the same time Johnny protested: “My mugshot is ugly.”

And then Daniel registered what he just heard and hissed: “You have a _record_?” at the same time Johnny told him, aside: “Dad I’d like to fuck,” and Hawk wrinkled his nose and said “Yeah, you look way better in your karate gear; you should get them a better picture.”

Daniel tried to impose order. “Hold on. Hold _on_ ,” he said loudly, and finally they shut up. He pointed to Johnny. “I’m going to ask you about that later; what the hell are you getting arrested for?” Then he said in the phone’s direction: “So these people are actually stalking us. Now, today, they’re stalking us.”

“Nah – this isn’t even bare minimum level cyberstalking, Mr. L. They’re just fangirls playing around, being thirsty. It’s fine.”

He ground his teeth. “Oh yeah, this is fine,” he snarled under his breath.

Johnny seemed almost to be enjoying himself. “Hey, this one says: _I stan a problematic king._ About me. Is that a compliment?”

Hawk laughed. “I mean, like… yes, but-”

“Hey.” Daniel jostled Johnny’s chair from behind. “Enough. We need to figure out what to do. Hawk: the guy says he’s going to write a _PWP_ next. What’s a PWP?”

“Plot-what-plot,” the kid answered immediately. “It means, just a sex scene, no attempt to set up a real narrative or explain why sex is happening. Just sex.” Then, as if that wasn’t clear enough: “It’s going to be you guys, present day, hooking up with each other.”

 _You guys, present day, hooking up with each other._ “No,” Daniel said. Mindless, blanket denial. 

“Definitely not okay,” Johnny agreed. “Especially if it’s going to be romantic.” He turned in his seat, and looked Daniel up and down. “I could _maybe_ drill him in an alley. With a bag over his head. If he kept his mouth shut.”

“Sensei! You said we’re being nice!”

Johnny ducked his head and faced the computer again. “Yeah. I’m kidding, don’t worry. I wouldn’t do him anywhere. Not in a box, not with a fox.”

Daniel swallowed. Did Johnny not remember how Green Eggs and Ham actually ended? “Guys. Focus,” he snapped instead. He hated this; it was like chaperoning one of the kids’ school trips. Last time he’d come within an inch of kicking one of Anthony’s friends out the back of the bus like _THIS IS SPARTA_. “We can’t let that happen. What do we say to this guy to make him _not_ go ahead?”

Hawk snorted. “Well first of all, this is a girl. Not a guy.”

Johnny demanded “What? How do you know?” but the kid had already started to elaborate.

“Most fanfiction writers are female, slash writers especially, and this one is clearly identifying with the, uh, receptive partner for the entire sex scene. I mean, like, look at the just-the-tip part.” He took a breath and started reading, too fast for Daniel to jump in and tell him not to. “' _Jesus Christ', he says, laying there shaking._ _Wondering, for some reason: did that count? Did they just technically **do it**? _That’s definitely a chick thing to wonder about. And then, if you look at her comments to the readers you see chatty, lots of emojis. It’s a girl. Or – a woman. Her slang is kind of dated. And I mean – Vaseline? Like, seriously? You can’t get much more stereotypical old-school than that.”

Johnny shrugged and sipped his beer. “Well, vaseline’s what I actually had on me. Kreese had me put it on my cheekbones in competition; I used to get cut all the time.”

Hawk lit up. “The MMA guys do that! Badass.”

Johnny banged his beer on the desk. “Hey. I told you not to watch that shit. You want to see fights, I’ll find you something to watch. Knock that shit off.”

“Johnny.” A horrible thought was starting to coalesce. Finally, _finally_ some of his sense of violation was starting to make sense. It wasn’t that he was a prude, or homophobic, or just didn’t like Johnny Lawrence, or didn’t want to hear about his teenage self railroaded into sex. And it was more than just embarrassment. It was the feeling of being _spied on._ Being watched. Being talked about by someone _who knew what they were talking about_. “You used to carry vaseline on you in competition?”

“Yeah. So?”

“So this person knew that. And also-…” He thought back to the black-and-white picture of himself getting sodomized on the tournament floor. He didn’t remember it in quite enough detail to be sure, so he bit the bullet and came over to the desk. “Look at this.” He elbowed Johnny aside, took over and scrolled until he found it. (Tried not to flinch, seeing the picture while leaning close enough to actually feel the guy’s body heat). Zoomed in. “Yeah: they knew what the _bracket_ was. Look at the names.”

“Yeah,” said Hawk, “I tried to confirm ‘em, but the All-Valley website doesn’t list results further back than the semis, and-”

“It’s correct,” Daniel snapped. “I was there.” He stood and moved away.

Johnny got it now. “Look! Even the _mats._ That’s what they looked like.”

“You can’t see the design of the mats from the video,” Daniel added. “Or the detail on the, the patch on your gi, my headband, the-… Johnny, this guy was _there_. This is a guy who _knows us._ ” The All-Valley crew – his colleagues, his peers, his _friends_ – one of them was sitting in those meetings smiling at him to his face and all the while thinking-

“ _Girl_ ,” Johnny corrected. “This is a _girl_ who knows us.” Then he froze. “Holy shit.” Turned slowly away from the computer and looked up at him. “She had a lot of feelings about watching us fight each other. And no trouble picturing me pushing you around.” 

His stomach dropped all the way out to the floor. Made it impossible to inhale; his diaphragm wasn’t working. He could only stare, mouth open.

Johnny looked just as shocked, but did at least retain the ability to form words. “She was there for the whole thing. She knew I was on my fourth All-Valley and what I keep in my pockets. Of course she knows what we sound like – this is _her_. This is Ali, man. Ali did this.”

* * *

**TBC.**

**Hahaha so jazzed for this! So, there’s sort of two paths I might take in this fic… one more Ali-centric, about her feelz that led to writing this and Johnny’s feelz about losing her… and one that’s mainly geared towards J &D hooking up. Maybe I’ll get in some of both. (Cause, Johnny being adventurous in sex but SUPER averse to emotional intimacy, which is how I'm envisioning him for this fic, is probably related to Ali in the end). Not sure yet. If you have thoughts, weigh in!**

**Also, I snagged “I stan a problematic king” from a comment by StrikeLikeACobraKai, so: thanks! Having real comments make their way into the fake story's comments, and having now used the fake author handle to finally actually join tumblr, and most of all the fact that the amazing dedlit ACTUALLY DREW one of the pictures described in this story… it's totally messing with my sense of reality here. It’s like that MC Escher picture of the hands drawing each other. You guys are awesome! :-)**


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: I have a super busy next couple of days, so updates will probably be shorter and/or less frequent this week. Sorry sorry sorry.**

* * *

He hung up with Hawk and tried to convince LaRusso that that they should think carefully about the approach to Ali and send her a joint message in the morning. “She’ll like it better if we do it from both of us,” he said. “Obviously she thinks we should be trying to get along.”

LaRusso looked murderous. “Obviously I don’t really _care_ what my psychotically vindictive ex-girlfriend thinks I should be doing at this point,” he spat. “Considering she thinks it should include getting-.” He didn’t finish.

 _Don’t talk about Ali like that._ But he didn’t say it. And he didn’t throw any punches either; he made a fist under the desk and dug his nails in until the need passed. “Yeah, well, since she’s the only one who can take the story down, we have to do things her way.” He tried to keep his tone calm and casual. “Neither of us looks up for a real smooth approach right now, so I say we sleep on it and write to her in the morning.”

“No - we do this _now._ Every second that story sits there, someone could be _reading it_.” 

He turned on the scare tactics. “Yeah, and if we screw up and piss her off, it’ll sit on there _forever_. And god knows what else she’ll write to get back at us.” LaRusso swallowed. Good: it was working. “I mean, you’re the one who just said Ali can be vindictive,” he reminded. “Do you really want her to start thinking that present-day you needs to give me a rim job?” Enough? Maybe not. So, he added: “Which, do you even know what that is?” He made a V with his fingers and fluttered his tongue into it. Pointed where with the other hand.

LaRusso turned away hissing “ _Jesus Fucking Christ._ ”

Point Lawrence. “I could see her getting mad enough to do that. I wonder what people would say about it? I bet they probably-”

“All right! All right. We do it tomorrow morning and we do it carefully and we get it done.”

“Okay. What time?” Knowing LaRusso, he got up at the crack of dawn to meditate the sunrise or something. “If you call before ten I’ll kill you. Eleven is better.”

“I’ll call at ten on the dot. Be sober and be ready to write; we’re not wasting any time.”

Not a word about _please,_ or _thank you,_ or _Jeez Johnny good thinking._ Not a word about _it was nice of you to come over and spend hours talking me off a ledge even though I punched you in the face for nothing._ Not a word.

So he said goodbye, and drove home, and struck first.

* * *

He opened up his computer and painstakingly typed in the URL. There it was: the story in all its internet porno glory. There were the pictures. He scrolled past them to the end. Into the comments.

He opened up a new comment. It wanted a name. _Ace,_ he told it. And he posted: _Johnny Lawrence sounds great!_ _I bet he’s the kind of guy who would give you lots of jewelry – but no more rings, after what happened to his lip. Jelly bracelets were safer. Am I right?_

He went and took a shower, ate some leftovers, drank a little. Thinking of Ali the whole time – nothing hard, nothing important, mostly just her laugh and the way she fit in his arms. 

By the time he was back at the computer, the author had answered him. _Johnny Lawrence deserved every slap he ever got._

He stared at the message a while, too long, until his eyes were watering. It was _her._ That was Ali. Ali. Ali, talking to him, after all this time.

He considered and rejected about fifty things to say. Finally decided not to say much of anything – just keep it light, give her the chance to keep going. _Some of them definately yes. Ok, maybe most._

She responded swiftly this time: _If you’re the real thing, prove it._

He drank. Steeled himself. Went for it. _You want a picture? I think maybe you need one, I was NEVER as girly as you drew me. Miss Pine would fail you. Except she wouldn’t, because she liked you too much._

The name of their art teacher should be proof enough, no?

Sure enough, within seconds the entire discussion disappeared. _Hey!_ he posted. _Did I just dream that up?_

 _If we’re going to do this let’s go offline,_ she said. _Call me._ And then deleted that exchange too.

* * *

**TBC.**

**HE’S TALKING TO ALI AGAIN! Awwwwwwwww. <3 <3 <3**

**I’m sure Daniel won’t flip out AT ALL haha.**


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: Kreese’s poster in TKK lists the date of the tournament as Dec 19, so I’m figuring it happened right before the kids’ Christmas break. If I’m wrong about the timing there somehow, sorry.**

* * *

“Hello, Ali Schwarber speaking.”

“Uh-. Hi, Ali, it’s, uh. It’s Johnny.”

“Oh, wow.” Laughter. “Okay. Johnny… hi.”

“Hi.” He laughed too, rendered a little stupid by the sound of her voice. “Okay, so… hi. Yeah. It’s been a while.” And for some reason the first thing he did was fight with her. “You couldn’t’ve told your parents I was going to call?”

Luckily he got a pass – she just laughed at him. If she were here, she would probably have shoved. “Hey, that was part of the test. If you couldn’t talk your way past _them_ and get my cell number, then you’re not Johnny Lawrence at all. Were they glad to hear from you?”

“I talked to your mom. Yeah, she was great. But she asked why I was calling,” he added. “I had to make something up.”

He heard her snort softly, like that was funny. Then it was quiet for a while, her just on the phone breathing, and he settled down on his bed happy to just listen to her. Finally she said: “So, okay. Listen… I am _so_ sorry. Really I am. I just, I never meant for you to-”

“No! No, Ali, don’t apologize,” he told her fast. “Seriously. It was my fault, really, I get it. I was an idiot, I would have ditched me too, don’t even worry about it.”

“Oh-.” A pause. “Oh… no, I was just-… just talking about, you know, the story.”

Beer made it all the way up to the back of his throat before he swallowed it down. “Oh- yeah, yeah of course,” he said, as soon as he could. “That.” He laughed a little and refocused; if he kept his mind on the story maybe he could stop wanting to throw up. “Yeah, that was a… hell of a story.” He dug out his copy and flipped to the drawing where he was fucking LaRusso and nuzzling his hair. _That_ should keep him focused; it was kind of hard to ignore.

Silence. “Listen though,” she said at last, “If you _want_ to talk about the rest… then I will. Because I’m sorry about that too. About the cold shoulder and all.” 

He dropped the papers down onto his bed. “You ignored me for the entire rest of the year.” _Stop. Stop. Stop. Don’t say anything. Don’t fight with her._ He was starting to panic – he was about to screw this up and he would never forgive himself if he did. It would be like losing her all over again.

But Ali didn’t make a fight of it. “I know. When you didn’t call over Christmas I thought you were sulking,” she explained, “And then school started back up and you didn’t give me the time of day after that.” He didn’t interrupt or argue with her, even though that’s certainly not how he would put it, and he didn’t see how he could possibly be blamed for not chasing her when she had ordered him in no uncertain terms to leave her alone. “So I thought… you were done with me. I tried to be done too. Avoided you and all.” He heard her breathe. “I didn’t hear until later about-… you know. Any of it.”

 _Any of it._ “What, you mean that Kreese strangled me for losing?” he said, brusque as ever when telling the story. “Yeah, that sucked. Pretty brutal, he throws a nice choke.”

She sighed. 

He rolled his eyes. Feeling sixteen all over again, her so disappointed, _Don’t act like you don’t have feelings. You can’t fool me._ “And it made me realize he didn’t care about me,” he went on, the first time ever saying it to another person. “And that I was an idiot for needing him. So I stopped. Left Cobra Kai. And that was that.”

“I heard you spent Christmas break on Bobby’s floor,” she said. “Literally – on the floor. His parents didn’t even realize you were there.”

“They figured it out by the end.” Over break he hadn’t said a word to anybody. The guys thought at first that Kreese had damaged his throat somehow, and then they started to think he’d just gone crazy. From what he remembered, when it was time for school again he sleepwalked through the days, drank and screwed his way through the nights and weekends. It was amazing he’d _survived_ until college started, really. 

“Oh, Johnny.” It was heavy and heartfelt; he could hear it. He could see her cocking her head sideways, fighting for eye contact when he tried to duck away from her. “I’m so sorry,” she said again, and this time it wasn’t light and laughing, like earlier. This time it was real. “I know how much he meant to you. If I’d known I would have been there for you. No matter how mad I was.”

He breathed a couple of times until he was sure it was normal. They were still in sync enough for him to know that it was time to lighten the mood. “Yeah, you’d have slapped some sense right into me.”

That got a laugh. “I know, I _know,_ hitting your boyfriend is wrong. I should apologize for all that.”

“But you’re not going to.”

“No, I’m not. You really did deserve it.”

He _missed_ her. Too much. “And so, what – your story is, like, delayed vengeance because I was a shitty boyfriend?”

She laughed again. “Oh god. That damn story. God, this is embarrassing.”

“For _you_? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Look, I never, ever, _ever_ meant for you to see it, okay? Didn’t think in a million years you would. And you weren’t a shitty boyfriend. You were just a jerk. You want me to take it down?”

 _You weren’t a shitty boyfriend._ He wanted to pause and freeze-frame that one.

“Johnny? What, are you thinking it over?”

“No no,” he managed, still too giddy to know what he was saying. “Sorry. Yeah, go ahead, take it down, leave it up, I don’t care. LaRusso was the one flipping out.”

“ _LaRusso?_ ” she echoed. Suddenly hard and not smiling anymore. “Daniel saw this?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“You’re friends with Daniel now? After all that?”

“No! No no no.” He was shaking his head hard, even though she couldn’t see him. “We didn’t see each other for thirty years. But then last year I got back into karate, opened a dojo – long story, I’ll tell you if you want to hear it – and he found out about it and crawled all up my ass. Now we’re back to hating each other again, finding ways to fuck with each other whenever possible. It’s nice, you know?” He was only half kidding. “Feels like home.”

She heaved a sigh – the one that meant she loved it but was still trying to sound mad.

“What?” he said, grinning.

“I really wasn’t far off, was I,” she said, sort of musing.

“Far off with what?”

“Well… some of the people who read my story asked for a sequel, you know, where you two reconnect years later.”

He’d had no problem laughing that idea off when he was standing over a panicking LaRusso, but now that it was just him and Ali this was making him squirm. “Look, I’m not going to bang him,” he said, “So don’t ask. Get your inspiration somewhere else.”

She laughed. “Oh, I don’t need inspiration – I’ve already written something. It’s not up yet, I’m still working on it. Want to know what happens?”

“No.”

“It’s you getting a spanking. A good one. Gave that cute little butt of yours a really hard time.”

“ _Jesus_ , Al,” he said before he could help himself.

He could hear her giggling through her nose. “Oh, don’t worry. I won’t put it up if you don’t want me to.”

“Don’t. Seriously, please don’t.” He couldn’t remember the last time he was willing to beg anyone for anything, but somehow it still felt all right to beg Ali. Didn’t sicken him even a little. “LaRusso would lord it over me.”

“Fine. Deal. But you owe me.”

“Anything you say.”

“Anything, huh?” Teasing. “Okay, I have to think about it.” She was quiet for a minute. He knew she was getting ready to hang up. “So is this your number?”

“Yeah. Call me whenever you want.”

“It was good talking to you, Johnny.”

“You too. Ali.” He shut his mouth – physically clenched his jaw down and pressed his lips together – before he could say anything else, anything he would regret.

“Bye.” She was smiling.

“Bye.” He was choking. 

After he hung up he put a pillow over his face. It felt ice cold. Jesus.

* * *

**TBC.**

**WHERE ARE WE GOING? Help, I have totally lost control. I sort of have a plan for the next part or two. Maybe.**


	10. Chapter 10

**Note, when this fic discusses the high school years, it’s not necessarily going to be compliant with what we learn in S3. No S3 spoilers here.**

* * *

He called at 10:30am – the extra half-hour a kindness, in recognition of Johnny’s general decency the day before.

“John. You up?”

“Mm. Yeah. Yeah.” Thick with sleep.

“Sleep well? You better have, because-”

“No. No, I was up the whole night. Too wired.” He cleared his throat, huffed, made all the noises of someone trying to shake himself to lucidity. “Yeah. I’m good now. What’s up?”

“What’s up is we’re writing to that-. Woman,” he finished instead, since Johnny had turned suddenly chivalrous about her yesterday. As if she hadn’t walked out on him just as coldly as she’d walked out on Daniel! “And getting her to undo what she did. Remember?”

“Yeah.”

“So, let’s do it. Where do you want to meet?”

“Mm. Doesn’t matter. Your house is fine.” Squeak of a faucet, sound of a shower. Curtain rings jingling. “ _Your computer is tiny and your beer sucks,_ ” Johnny yelled, clearly on speaker now, “ _But it’s still better than my place._ ”

The guy was getting in the shower while still on the phone with him? Ugh. He tried to tactfully ignore it.

“ _Shit! Cold!_ ”

He sighed. “We can’t do it at my house; my family’s home today,” he said, quietly.

“ _What?_ ”

“I SAID-….” He pressed his lips together. Did not explode. “I SAID NO.” Loudly enough to be heard over a shower.

“ _Fine! You want to come here?_ ” A wet burbling sound – either Johnny was part whale and had a blowhole, or he was childishly blowing water all over the place for no reason except being a giant child who wanted to make Daniel uncomfortable by being in the shower.

Daniel grit his teeth. _If I come over there and you’re naked I’ll kill you,_ he wanted to say, but couldn’t bring himself to shout that. He thought of a better idea. “NO! YOUR DOJO. HALF AN HOUR FROM NOW. OKAY?” Johnny would have to be dressed, at least.

“ _Mine?_ ”

“YES.” _You aren’t welcome in mine. And it has no wifi anyway._ “HALF AN HOUR.”

Abruptly the faucets squealed and the water went off. Curtain rings jingled. “Half an hour,” Johnny said, normally. “You got it, LaRusso.” 

The whipped-cloth sound of a towel coming off the rod. He hung up.

* * *

Johnny was sitting behind the desk in his office, feet up and beer in hand. He was reading his _papers_ again. “I should’ve known,” he said, shaking his head. “I didn’t read it that careful before,” he added, “Because, you know, euw. But look. When I’m making fun of you for getting off: _Petting up and down the kid’s arm, to show he doesn’t mean any harm_. I absolutely used to do that. That’s how she would know I was kidding when I said something to piss her off. I would, like…” He sketched the gesture in the air, up and down, hand curled like he was stroking with the backs of his fingers.

Whatever. He had to derail this train, before Johnny started narrating any of the things worse than cuddling. “Tell me you haven’t been up all night rereading that.”

Johnny smiled – not really at him. “Whatever, man. It’s different now. It’s from Ali.”

“It- it is not different.” He did not appreciate the smile. “And if she wanted to write something autobiographical she should have used her own goddamn name and picture. Not mine.”

Johnny’s gaze sharpened suddenly. “It’s not autobiographical,” he snapped. “I never did anything like this with her. I never pushed and I was always really gentle. Like, _really_ gentle.”

“Whoa, okay, that is _way_ too much information-”

“-Even though she _asked_ for stuff like this,” he went on, right over him. “I said no. I’m an idiot.”

“You can reminisce about all the freaky sex you didn’t have on your own time. Can we please-”

“I’m an _idiot,_ ” he said again. “I was sixteen. I thought I was being all Disney prince about it. What the hell did I know.”

He had no idea what that meant and it didn’t matter. “Johnny. Put the beer down and pay attention. Ali is ancient history, for both of us.” He came and snatched the papers right out of his hand, slammed them on the desk dramatically. “ _This_ is our problem now.” 

It worked in that it stopped the daydreaming, but it turned him childishly cranky. “It’s only a problem because it’s _you._ ”

“We are in total agreement about that. Now focus, and let’s figure out what the hell we can say to take care of it. Move over.”

There was only one chair. In the end he wound up balanced awkwardly on half of it, squatting most of his weight on his free leg, while Johnny did the same next to him. Vengefully elbowing every time someone shifted.

He booted up his laptop. Connected to the Cobra Kai wi-fi. (Ignored Johnny muttering _nerd_ under his breath.)

Pulled up the awful story and scrolled fast to the comments section.

And promptly had the wind knocked out of him. 

Because there, in the comments, was his _picture._ And it wasn’t just someone’s cartoon drawing this time, now it was an _actual photograph_ of his _actual face._ Then it _moved_. (Damn Johnny’s slow internet connection.). “What’s- what’s this,” he choked out. 

Johnny looked. “That’s a gif,” he said, confidently. “Get with the program, man. Haven’t you ever seen a gif before?”

“No- I mean-…” he was choking too hard to even finish the sentence.

“I’m kidding.” Johnny sounded completely undisturbed. “You mean what _is_ it? Looks like it’s from Valley Fest – when else are you on a stage in a gi, right? Somebody got a clip of us each giving a _look,_ and put em together. That’s all.”

The feeling of being _watched,_ being trapped in glass, was dragging him under again. “That’s not-. Think about it. Ali wouldn’t-. Have that video.”

“Yeah, Ali definitely didn’t do this,” Johnny said. 

“So someone was-. Watching us.”

“The whole crowd was watching us, man.” Willfully failing to appreciate the horror of what was going on. “Look – the link to the Valley Fest video’s right there in the comment above. It’s on the youtube. Some annoying computer nerd just took clips of it and made this gif. So what? We look cool.”

“ _Nothing about this is cool._ ”

Then Johnny frowned. “One sec though – lemme call Hawk. Because the next guy says: _Haha that’s great, I think I’m going to make a fanvid,_ so what the hell is a fanvid? I don’t want someone following me around, some paparazzi bullshit. If we’re gonna have that we should at least be famous. Get a private jet and some babes out of it. Hold on.” Dialing as he talked.

Daniel could only sit and stare at the little gif in horror. Himself, chin tilted up, closing his eyes halfway in what looked like smug satisfaction. (It _wasn’t._ It was just those stupid bright spotlights from the lighting booth!). Then Johnny, tilting down, eyes narrowed and smiling evilly up from underneath his eyebrows. (He was probably just squinting against his own stupid smoke.).

He stared blankly at the gif through dozens of repetitions before Johnny finally hung up. “Hawk says _fanvid_ is no big deal,” he reported. “That’s just someone will take a song and combine it with pieces of picture and video they have of us. He says it probably won’t be all gay and mushy. His money’s on something called Bad Romance.”

Then Johnny swung the computer towards himself and started _typing._ His feeling of everything spiraling out of control intensified, and he lunged to try and block the keys. “Whoa – what are you doing?”

“Hold on.” Johnny held him back with one hand and continued to hunt for letters with the other. “I’m telling them that the only possible song choice here is I’m Too Sexy. Remember that one? It’s like-”

“ _Stop it!_ Do not _encourage_ these people! What the hell is the matter with you!”

“Me? What’s the matter with _you_?” Johnny was _laughing,_ damn him, laughing at other people’s misery the way he always had. “This entire thing goes away once Ali takes it down, remember? Stories, comments, _everything_. So fucking relax. Have a little fun with it.” Then he looked over, eyes wide and sincere. “Hey – come on.” _Too_ sincere. “It won’t hurt if you just relax.”

* * *

**TBC.**

**Sooo, you may have noticed a lack of updates on this story for the past few weeks. It’s not writer’s block exactly… more like, a planning block. I have a couple of ideas that interest me for this story – and thousands of words written! – but I can’t think of a way to weave the ideas in concisely and I am really not looking for this to become a monstrously huge epic that spirals out of my control haha. So, I’m working on it. Thanks for your patience and feedback!**


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N: Once again, this doesn’t take S3 into account – stuff we learned about their high school years there doesn’t necessarily jive with what I have here. I’m trying to stay mostly consistent, but I think some of my headcanon doesn’t quite match. We shall see.**

* * *

Receiving mercy was humiliating, because _needing_ mercy was humiliating. He had had that drummed into him early and he had never stopped believing it. (No matter how many hippies, girls, and whiney parents had tried to convince him otherwise.). So, yes: he could see that LaRusso was starting to freak out again, but in an effort to be nice he was trying to ignore it and act normal.

“Hey, come on,” he teased, “It won’t hurt if you just relax.” He was all ready to duck the inevitable punch when it came – or even eat it, if it didn’t look too bad.

But it didn’t come. Instead LaRusso leaped to his feet, which dumped _him_ on the floor since they had been sharing a chair, and then scrambled over the chair and over him and fled the room.

“Hey- hey come back here,” he called, struggling to unfold himself from between the desk and the wall and stand. “Come on, I’m just-… come on.” Finally he was up and in the doorway, watching LaRusso move restlessly around the center of the mat.

Around and around, but not any closer to the door. The guy wasn’t storming out; he was just pacing.

“Johnny, so help me, if you say _one more thing_ …”

“Okay, okay. I stopped. I stopped, okay?” This was awkward. This was embarrassing for _everybody_. Why couldn’t he just take his torture like a man?

“Okay,” LaRusso said, kind of breathless. “Good. Jesus Christ, how much clearer do I need to be? I need this to end. I need you to not fuck with me. You understand that? Are you capable of behaving like an adult for once in your goddamn life?”

(I need this, I need that. Jesus. The fucking balls.). “Yeah, okay, fine,” he soothed instead. Anything to get the guy squared away so that he could return to torturing him with a clear conscience. “I’ll take care of it right now, okay? I’ll call Ali and have her take it down, right now. All right?”

LaRusso frowned. “You’ll-? You’ll what?”

Shit. He was probably not going to take this well. “I’ll, uh, I said I’ll call Ali.” He kept to the truth, and the minimum. “I talked to her parents last night and got her cell number.”

And LaRusso _didn’t_ take it well – but not for the reasons Johnny had expected. “You talked to her parents, huh.” Sneering and bitter. “Those assholes never gave me the time of day. But _you_ call up, out of the blue, after-”

“Don’t talk about Mrs. Mills like that,” he snapped. Mrs. Mills _loved_ him. (Maybe a little too much. One pool party she got drunk and trailed her fingers over his chest saying something about his workout and Mr. Mills had to lead her away.). And people who loved Johnny were sort of in short supply, so.

LaRusso held up his hands. “Oh, sure – sorry. Forgive me. Of course all you rich assholes stick together, what am I _thinking._ ”

Seriously? “Good question,” he said, “What _are_ you thinking? Cause I live in a dump in Reseda and I can barely make rent. _You’re_ the rich asshole now, remember?” What was the _matter_ with him?

They stared at each other. LaRusso’s mouth was tight like he was trying to physically hold back from saying something else, which in Johnny’s opinion was stupid. A good fight might just clear the air, and they already _were_ on mats…

“Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t you take your shoes off, and we can throw down.”

“Oh yeah, because a bloody nose would make my day just that much better.”

“I like that you know I would win.” Teasing.

“I didn’t say you’d _win,_ ” LaRusso snapped, _not_ teasing. “I said you’d probably aim for the face because you know that unlike you _I_ actually have to show up to a respectable job tomorrow and explain myself to a family that cares about me if I get hurt.”

 _And,_ that was it. He couldn’t answer the family thing, but: “Love to hear you explain to your old pal Miyagi that you don’t think teaching karate is a respectable job.”

Silence. Then, low and venomous, LaRusso said: “Say his name again, and I’ll forget that he taught me it’s only for defense.”

He could not be more delighted. “Take your shoes off and you can forget whatever the hell you want.” But LaRusso froze, then wilted, and Johnny knew suddenly that he couldn’t do it – couldn’t admit that he _wanted_ to drop the prissiness and throw punches.

 _Fuck it; the kids’ll wipe it down tomorrow._ He stepped on the mat himself, fists up, and threw a kick from out of distance as a courtesy, a warning that he was coming. It was about the last courtesy he felt like giving just now, and definitely more than the prick deserved.

The next kick was right where it needed to be.

* * *

**TBC.**

**Short update, sorry. The next one's got a bunch of stuff!**


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N: I posted the previous chapter less than 24 hours ago, so, make sure you didn't miss one :-)**

* * *

Johnny had started the day in a damn good mood, and even now, all LaRusso had managed to do was annoy him. His blood wasn’t really up. That was why, when LaRusso left himself open to a _beautiful_ spinning back elbow, Johnny pulled it. Just a little; he still connected and left the guy staggering back holding his nose, but it was definitely a gift because he _could_ have had blood fountaining all over the mat. “You’re welcome,” he smirked, because, okay, he _was_ a little annoyed. “You can tell your _caring family_ that Johnny Lawrence went easy on you this time.”

LaRusso stepped in with a hand still over his face, which Johnny assumed meant they were taking a break, but then came a kick and before he could get his balance again LaRusso was grabbing his collar and chucking him into the mirror.

The crash was deafening. He hit the floor in a shower of broken glass. He sensed someone standing over him and sucked his knees in quick in case of kicks, closed his hand around a big glass shard just in case things turned _really_ dicey.

It was all entirely his own fault. _Kreese would have my ass for this._ What the hell was he doing, letting an enemy in to his defenses? Treating _LaRusso_ like a buddy just training for fun? (And honestly, even most of his buddies used to get more caution out of him than this. He was going soft.).

As soon as he knew which side was up he pushed to his feet. Backed up a few crunching steps. (Good thing they had shoes on _now_ , wasn’t it.).

LaRusso was staring at him in horror. It took him a second to appreciate that he was still holding a six-inch shank; he dropped it and spread his hands in apology.

But LaRusso didn’t look any less spooked. 

Right, right: flipping out. Probably in no shape to be fighting with in the first place. Still, having learned his lesson, he kept his distance and didn’t take his eyes off the guy as he started brushing glass out of his hair. “We’re gonna want a rain check,” he suggested, “Unless you like it really messy. Shards and karate don’t mix.”

LaRusso only nodded.

“You broke my mirror. What the fuck, man.”

Another nod. “I’m- I’m sorry.”

He grinned. An apology from Daniel LaRusso? What a world.

“Can we-… So can we make the call to Ali now?” The guy wasn’t begging, exactly… but almost. Like he knew damn well he had no right to ask.

Johnny looked himself over fast and determined he wasn’t really bleeding from anywhere; it was just a couple of little scratches. “Fine.”

Except when he took his phone out of his pocket, the screen was dark and cracked to hell. Fuck. “Actually: not fine. You broke my phone, too.”

LaRusso was immediately crowding into his space, looking over his shoulder, grabbing it out of his hands. “Fuck – _fuck_!” he hissed. “Are you serious!”

“Sorry, man. That’s what you get when you-”

“All right! All right, shut up.” LaRusso took a deep breath. “Do you have the number written down anywhere? We can call on my phone.”

“Yeah. No,” he corrected a second later. “I took the garbage out this morning, sorry.”

LaRusso was already unlocking his own phone, handing it over. “Call the parents again.”

He did it without argument – Mrs. Mills would laugh it off for sure; he used to call Ali almost daily to read off some assignment he was supposed to have written down himself. But this time nobody picked up.

LaRusso was pacing again. “Do you have her number anywhere else?”

He shook his head. “If you feel like dumpster-diving outside my apartment be my guest,” he joked. 

Then he saw that LaRusso was biting his lip. Squirming.

No _way._ “I was _kidding._ Come on – you are not climbing into a dumpster for this.”

“You think I’m afraid of a little garbage, compared to my reputation?”

“It’s not _a little garbage._ ” Even empty, the dumpster reeked so bad in the heat that you gagged just walking past it. And right now it wasn’t empty. “You’d rather fuck me on live TV _and_ the internet than climb in there.”

“It’s the quickest way out of this. Take me to your apartment.”

* * *

Someone who had no capacity to think ahead, had no capacity to worry. Someone who couldn’t worry couldn’t become anxious or overanxious and had _no ability_ to understand, even a little bit, the hell that Daniel was living.

He couldn’t _chill_ ; he couldn’t _relax_ ; he couldn’t drive Johnny to a mall and _wait_ by the stupid glass counters while a salesgirl asked how much storage he needed and whether he wanted a screen protector or not. He’d rather charge over to that disgusting apartment and leap headfirst into a trash heap. At least he would be _doing_ something. There was a chance he would become able to breathe again all on his own, if he just kept _doing_ things.

He had his hand already on the lid of the dumpster when Johnny grabbed him and spun him around. “Whoa! That track suit is probably worth more than my entire wardrobe. Come in and get something crappy to wear. It’ll take you one second. Come on.”

Daniel could have broken the grip on his elbow, if he was willing to really fight, but all a fight would do was distract them again. “Okay. Okay. Fine.” He followed Johnny into his shitty apartment and stood around awkwardly until Johnny found him clothes shitty enough to match it.

He took the armful of ripped denim and stained sneakers, and shoved past. “Where’s your bathroom?”

Johnny snorted. “Okay, Danielle. Like you didn’t used to change in front of me every day? Over there, on the right.”

He slammed the bathroom door behind him, but Johnny’s comment brought him back suddenly to the locker room, lockers _right next to_ each other because of their stupid last names. He yelled back as he was getting dressed: “Forgive me if I don’t feel like getting my ass whipped with a towel right now.”

Loud laughter. “How many times did I tell you it wasn’t me?”

He had denied it with the towel still in his hand. He had denied it even though he was the only person in range. He had denied it, through laughter, even when Daniel _saw him doing it_ in the mirror. And everyone else had laughed along. The memory of that was just-… “What is the _matter_ with you?” he asked, as he opened the door all decked out in Johnny’s grubbiest.

Johnny ignored that, probably because there was no possible answer. “You sure you want to do this?”

“You sure you don’t want to help?”

“Absolutely. I’ll boost you in though. Come on.”

He followed him outside, trying to roll the waistband of his jeans so they didn’t fall down. “What color garbage bags are you using? I’ll chuck up the ones that might be yours and look through them out here.”

“Uh-… white.” Johnny eyed the dumpster doubtfully. “I can’t believe you’re doing this – and I even more can’t believe that you have a whole _plan_.”

It stank already, and he was going in alone, all because Johnny didn’t deign to keep an address book. “Just boost me and shut your mouth.”

It was horrible, but he didn’t throw up inside the dumpster.

He threw up in the parking lot instead, when he was actually ripping into the putrid bags. He threw up all over the ground and Johnny’s sneakers but he felt much better afterwards and once his stomach was empty he could dry-heave with impunity and keep going.

He found the receipt with Ali’s number on it. Handed it over and said: “Make the call.” Stench or not, he knew he could stop gagging as soon as the story was down.

Johnny at least cooperated, right away. “Hey Ali. It’s, uh, it’s Johnny again. Sorry to bug you. Yeah, I’m on LaRusso’s phone, he broke mine. I just wanted to, uh, to call and say he’s _really_ freaking out over here, and see if-… yeah.” There was quiet for a minute. “Yeah, he’s right here. Okay.” And he held the phone out. “She wants to talk to you.”

He swallowed. (Swallowed down another heave.). Johnny was holding the phone out, but he was too disgusting to want to touch it, so he just stepped in and leaned close. “Uh- hello? Ali?” Johnny’s stupid hand was brushing his cheek. Where the hell else was he supposed to put his face though; why didn’t they think of speakerphone?

“Daniel?” She sounded… hard.

“Uh, yeah. Hi. Long time no see.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it is.” She didn’t waste a second. Bright and unfriendly, she told him: “You about ready to apologize for those names you called me? Cause otherwise, I’m not sure we have much to talk about.”

“What?”

“If the next words out of your mouth aren’t _I’m sorry, I was out of line, I’ve never used those words with another girl and I’m so sorry I used them with you,_ you can hang up the phone right now.”

This was totally out of the blue. He stared stupidly. Names? What was she talking about? He tried to remember what he’d said, but all he could think of was what she’d done to Mr. Miyagi’s car and the way she looked in that dress standing there telling him-… “Right,” she said, finally. “Put Johnny back on.”

He nodded for Johnny to take the phone. Johnny listened for a second, then said: “Not really,” and then, “Okay.” Hung up.

He held out the phone, shaking his head. “She says no. You, uh… wanna take a shower?”

* * *

**TBC.**

**It’s not _really_ about the name-calling, folks, just as it wasn’t _really_ about Johnny missing her birthday party. More coming shortly, hopefully.**

**Let me know what you think! And what you're hoping to see. It definitely helps me figure out what happens - I started with zero idea where we were going, and now I have _some_ idea.**


	13. Chapter 13

“Can you stop freaking out?” he asked after a minute. LaRusso just shook his head. “Okay, then can you freak out in my shower instead? You really need to clean up, man.”

The guy at least didn’t resist when he was steered inside – at arm’s length – and into the bathroom. Johnny pointed. “That’s the hot. I’ll be right back with a shower beer.”

Actually, he brought three. LaRusso was still just standing there though, watching himself in the mirror.

So Johnny sighed and fixed the temperature himself. Opened all three cans. “Drink these,” he ordered, “And shower there, and you’ll feel better. Come on – get moving. I’m not undressing you for you; think what a field day Ali would have.”

That got him a _look_ , which was good – it meant that at least somebody was home in there.

“I’m going to go find a clean towel.”

His first stop after the bathroom, though, was to his computer. He posted a comment as _Ace,_ quick, without obsessing over every word this time. _Whew, poor LaRusso!_ , he said. _Little twerp is really having a rough time. I almost feel bad for him._

By the time he’d found a towel in good enough shape for a guest, Ali had responded. _NO MERCY, right? :-)_

“You really pissed her off, man,” he called, in the bathroom’s general direction. “What did you say to her?”

“ _What?_ ” LaRusso yelled back. Oh, good – it sounded like he was finally actually in the shower.

He sighed and walked down the hall. Shouldered the door open. “Lock’s busted,” he explained, in case LaRusso was wondering. “What did you say to Ali to piss her off this much?”

“I don’t know. I have no idea. I just… I don’t know,” LaRusso still wasn’t okay, it sounded like. Stammering and repeating himself. “We broke up when I caught her with some other guy, okay, so I don’t know what the hell I said. Probably lit into her for cheating on me. I don’t remember.” The water turned off. “But there is _no excuse_ for this, no matter _what_ I said. You don’t just go and _do_ this to someone, humiliate them in front of the whole world, and, what, think I’ll let it stand? I’m not going to let her get away with this. I’m not. I _can’t_.”

He blinked. “Are you seriously standing naked in my shower ranting like a movie villain?”

“So gimme a goddamn towel and I’ll come out.”

“Okay, here you go...”

Sadly, LaRusso was sharp enough to anticipate what was coming when he yanked the curtain aside: he blocked the towel-flick, and snatched the towel right out of Johnny’s hands. Wrapped up in it without even drying off first. “You fucking asshole.”

He laughed. “What? It wasn’t me!”

* * *

After a shower, two beers, and about five hundred droning repetitions of _It’s going to be okay, we will take care of_ this, Daniel’s heartrate had slowed enough for him to sit down and think normally. It looked like Johnny’s computer was working, so he suggested they try to make their case via comment message, together, since she seemed open to hearing it from Johnny at least.

As they scrolled through the comments though, what caught Johnny’s eye this time was someone saying: _My first time was so boring – I wish it was like this instead!! Is that horrible lol?_

Johnny laughed at that – until he read Ali’s response. _I hear you. Mine was awful – boyfriend pressured me into it and it hurt like hell and he didn’t even notice. At least here they were paying attention to each other! :-/_

At that, _finally_ , Johnny seemed to be experiencing some actual dismay. He stared at the reply, read it aloud, bit his lip, stared at it some more.

The little sliver of schadenfreude was maybe the highlight of his day so far, so Daniel couldn’t resist rubbing it in. “Ooh – ouch,” he said, with a big theatrical wince. Patted Johnny on the back like he was sympathizing.

Johnny shrugged him off.

“I’m just saying. See why we need to get this taken down? You don’t want people knowing that you were a bad screw. So, come on. You should start taking this seriously now.”

“Wait – what?” Johnny blinked. “No – she’s not talking about _me_ , you idiot. We never…” He shook his head, gestured vaguely. “She was scared of getting pregnant, people finding out, whatever, so we only fooled around.” He leaned back in his chair, head tilted up to the ceiling, hands laced together behind his neck. “I can’t _believe_ I wasn’t up for backdooring. I was all, _don’t gimme a consolation prize, that’s gross, are you nuts_. I’m an idiot.”

He really, _really_ did not want to hear Johnny muse about his sexual history. “Come on,” he said, “Focus.”

But suddenly Johnny righted his chair and _was_ focused – and staring at him intently. “Wait a second: if it wasn’t me… was it _you_? Did _you_ make Ali have sex?”

“What? Make-? No! Obviously. Come on. She was-… nobody made anybody do anything.”

 _I’m not ready, Daniel. I don’t think we’re there yet._ How many times had she said that? And he’d _respected_ it, every time, until finally she said something different. It took _months._ He waited for her to say yes, and finally she did, and then they had sex. That was what you were _supposed_ to do, and he had done it. 

Johnny was getting up out of his seat. “It _was_ you. You gave my girl a shitty first time. And you haven’t even stopped to feel _bad_ about it?”

“Hey, wait a second. Just- just wait.” He got up too, trying to think. “I don’t think about Ali very often because we ended badly, okay, and I lasted about thirty seconds on my first time so I don’t think much about that either, and, and I had no idea she wasn’t happy,” he stammered. “She never-… she never said anything was wrong with it…”

But she _had_ changed a little afterwards. She’d stopped finding excuses to ruffle his hair, stopped teasing him for being _so damn nice._ At the time it seemed like a victory, like she was starting to see him as something more than a lost puppy to take care of. But maybe, in hindsight, there was something else going on. It wasn’t too long after that that she walked out on him.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me. You punched Ali’s v-card – and you did a _bad job_.” Johnny shoved him, hard enough to send him back two steps. Followed up, grabbed his shoulders and shoved again. This time he hit a wall.

“ _Ow_ \- Hey. Come on, knock it off-…”

“ _It hurt like hell and he didn’t even notice,_ ” he recited. Fists clenched, breathing hard. “You deserve a beating I’d go to jail for.” 

“I was a kid, okay?” he snapped. “What do you want from me? If she didn’t like it I had no idea, she never told me. Okay?” Then he blinked. “It’s none of your damn business anyway.”

“Unless she tells me it is. Maybe she _wants_ me to kick your ass. I’m going to ask her.”

He headed for the computer, but Daniel grabbed his wrist. Pointed to the computer himself. “Obviously she’s taken revenge all by herself already.”

Johnny pulled free and crossed his arms. “Yeah – so that’s what this is. That’s why she wrote this and won’t take it down. She’s pissed at _you_.” He threw himself into a chair and leaned back again, almost far back enough to fall. “No wonder she cheated on you. But why do _I_ have to be in a porno because _you’re_ shit in bed? This sucks.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” Johnny still wasn’t in _exactly_ the same boat as he was – he wasn’t literally unable to cope, sick to his stomach with the thought of people seeing this, knowing about it, thinking of it. But at least now he seemed to be genuinely opposed to the story’s existence. At least now he wasn’t having fun.

At least now he was finally an ally. The worst ally ever, maybe, and an ally who wanted to kill him, but still.

* * *

**TBC.**

**Okay, so now we’re starting to get to the bottom of it!**

**The next chapter makes me laugh.**


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N: Less than 24 hours since previous update; make sure you didn't miss that one!**

* * *

* * *

**He snaps his mouth closed and goes stiff all over, trying to breathe over this sharp, terrifying, brand spanking new flavor of pain he never even knew existed. _Up my ass. That’s up my ass,_ he tells himself clearly, in an effort to keep a handle on what the hell is going on. Johnny’s close to him, breathing in his ear. Not moving - waiting.**

**But the pain is still getting worse. “It hurts, man no, it hurts a lot, don’t do it,” he gasps out finally. His pride doesn’t say a word about not begging; it hurts that much.**

**“Yeah, okay.” The voice is _right by_ his ear, with him, reassuring. “I’m barely in at all, but okay. You need more lube or something?”**

**“Yeah – something.” It’s throbbing now, stabbing. Still unbearable. “Nuh-uh. I can’t. _Help._ ”**

**“Okay, okay. I’m gonna take it out.”**

* * *

He tossed the papers down on his bed and told himself, again, to stop reading. It was hard though. He was angry and antsy. The entire feel of the thing was different now – knowing that Ali had been made so miserable that she thought something like this would have been _better_ was just… ugh.

And the fact that she’d cast _him_ as the bad guy in her story…

At least she had imagined him _paying attention_ though, where apparently LaRusso hadn’t.

_It hurt like hell and he didn’t even notice._

Ugh. He wanted to punch walls.

Instead he got drunk and went back on the computer. (This violated Miguel’s command that he _never, ever send things over the internet when you’re drinking,_ but he couldn’t help himself.). He scrolled through to find Ali’s comment, and responded (slowly, picking carefully for all the right keys): _Do you want me to throw him through a window?_ Then, after he’d posted it, he reconsidered and posted another one: _I mean: CAN i throw him through a window?? And then run him over?_

He watched TV and waited, long enough even to start sobering up, but she didn’t answer. He scrolled idly through some other people’s comments and saw one from this afternoon: _Got some GREAT content in the works – using actual present day pics. Literally from TODAY. Stay tuned!_

From today? He and LaRusso hadn’t seen a single person today.

But that didn’t mean nobody had seen _them._ His phone was broken, so he stomped out the door and banged on the apartment across the way and dragged a very guilty-looking Miguel outside.

“So, uh, hey Sensei. What’s up?”

“Don’t gimme that. Were you spying on me today?”

“Spying...?” Miguel frowned - and then his eyes widened. “Oh no. What happened?”

“Diaz, I’ll kill you,” he growled. “ _You_ tell _me_ what happened.”

“I don’t know but I swear I had nothing to do with it,” he said in a rush. “Please don’t kill me.”

Johnny had never seen him look this guilty. He narrowed his eyes. “I’ll kill you _way more_ if you don’t tell me everything. So start talking.”

Miguel squirmed more and bit his lip. Finally took out his phone and clicked around, and held it out, wincing. “One thing led to another.”

“Right.” As that was really the story of Johnny’s life he couldn’t judge _too_ harshly, except, yes he could. He looked at the phone. It was a text conversation with Hawk.

Miguel had said: **_Sensei just pulled up n larusso is WITH HIM n they are fighting in my parking lot._**

Hawk just wrote back: **???**

**_Ok no not fighting, just shoving and yelling. They are going into senseis apt now._ **

**INTO HIS APARTMENT?? Holy shit are they actually banging???? Go check it out.**

Johnny looked up. “Check it out? Seriously? Tell me you did not use your key.”

“No! No, I swear, I would never do that, I wouldn’t _want_ to walk in on- wait. Are you actually…?”

He rolled his eyes and looked back at the phone.

**_OK this is nuts, I went out and theyre in there slamming doors and yelling and larusso said sthing about getting his “ass whipped with a towel.” Nfk._ **

**NOICE! Is he getting bullied or fucked or both??**

**_Idk, im back inside. I didn’t want them to catch and kill me._ **

“Smart kid,” Johnny muttered.

**Diaz YOU PUSSY. Ok well at least open the windows so you can hear.**

**_K theyre coming out. Larussos wearing senseis clothes. Wtf._ **

**SOMEBODY GOT LAAAAID!**

**_OMG_ **

**What**

**_Sensei just threw him in the dumpster. Literally picked him up and yeeted him into our garbage._ **

**Are you serious? See this is why we have the best sensei in the multiverse.**

(“Damn straight,” Johnny muttered, even though what the hell did _yeeted_ mean.)

**_Yes he actually did. I cant believe this._ **

**Ok keep talking, now what?**

**_Ok ok I get it now, larussos looking thru stuff. I think senseis making him look for something. Hes literally on his hands and knees in my parking lot digging thru garbage. This is the weirdest thing I have ever seen._ **

**Pics or it didn’t happen!**

And then there were pictures - mainly LaRusso on all fours, himself standing over him with arms crossed. Johnny scrolled past them, and saw that Hawk’s only answer was a bunch of emojis that culminated in a dozen thumbs-ups. He handed the phone back.

“I’m sorry?” Miguel hazarded, kind of flinching away. “I didn’t know he was going to do anything. What he did do, put it on the tumblr?”

Fucking kids. “What the hell’s a tumbler?”

* * *

**TBC.**

**Okay okay haha sorry, sorry, we are getting to the end. Yes the kids have made a tumblr. It’s not going to spiral any further out of control after this though, they’re going to get everything resolved, I promise.**

**Also, credit is due here to the person who posted gifs of people throwing Daniel around this season with the hashtag "Just yeet him." Unfortunately I don't remember who that was or know how to find it again; I don't actually know how to work tumblr.**


	15. Chapter 15

When Miguel came in to his computer and showed him what a tumblr was, he immediately wished to be drunk again. He could hardly even register, one after the other, the chaotic collection of pictures, gifs, and messages about him and LaRusso that for some reason people were creating and collecting and showing to each other. “Wait – what the hell is _that._ And what the hell is _that_? That’s not what I actually said. What do you mean _meem,_ what does that mean? What-? Wait. Wait. Slow down.” If the kid didn’t cool it he was going to have a seizure.

“Tell you what,” Miguel said finally, “Why don’t you take a look at this yourself, and come back to me with questions after. It’s going to drive us both crazy if you sit here watching me scroll. Do you… know how to use the mousepad?”

He gave a dirty look and nudged the kid over. “Yeah. Watch – on the other website I even figured out how to leave comments. Ali’s been _answering me,_ man. Look.” He navigated away from the tumblr and back to the story like a champion, and found the latest _Ace_ comment he’d left… and then almost jumped out of his skin. “ _She answered again!_ Right there! Look!”

Miguel read. “ _Friend me on Facebook and we can do a video chat._ ” He looked at Johnny with raised eyebrows. “You know how to do that?”

He turned the computer back in Miguel’s direction. “In about five seconds I will. Right?”

* * *

When he saw her on the screen he felt himself melting into a stupid smile. “Ali. Hey.”

She looked… great. The same. But older now. But still the same. He kept staring stupidly at her, but luckily she was doing the same to him, just grinning ear to ear and sort of shaking her head, like she couldn’t believe it. “Johnny Lawrence.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s nice to get to actually see you this time. You look great.”

“You look… so amazing.” _Smooth._ He should not have said that. But there was nothing else he could possibly say. Fuck, he should have gotten drunk first. Gah. 

He knew he had to do _something_ other than stare with stars in his eyes, so he made himself get down to business. “Listen. I, uh, I saw what you said.” Suddenly he had much too _much_ to say. “Ali I am _so sorry,_ seriously, I can’t believe-”

“It’s okay,” she interrupted. “Seriously. It’s okay. It wasn’t a big deal, it was just plain old _bad sex_. It happens.”

“I just can’t believe that… you know, after… me and you… never...”

“Yeah.” She laughed. “Well, I will cop to regretting that. _Saving myself_ turned out to be a mistake.”

She was already rolling her eyes at herself, so with a massive, heroic effort, he did not say _I told you so._

“But anyway, I get it now,” he said instead. “You wrote this to stick it to LaRusso, and as embarrassing as it is for me personally, I am totally on board with that.”

She was still smiling. “No, the fact that he messed up my first time and then broke up with me like a complete jerk is why I won’t take it _down_ for him. But it’s not why I wrote it. I mean,” she corrected herself, “It’s part of it. I was definitely thinking: okay, you want sex? Here, have some. See how _you_ like it when the guy’s only in it for himself.” She tilted her head at him, gave him one of her shyer smiles. “But then it turned out I couldn’t actually picture you that mean in bed. You could be a jerk everywhere else, but there?” She teased a little. “A frickin romantic.”

That made _him_ shy too; he looked down at the table. “Yeah, well, you wouldn’t say that if you saw what I was doing after we broke up,” he muttered. Anything to stop her from making him blush like this.

“Oh yeah? What were you doing?”

“Uh…” He was not in the business of sugarcoating. “Pretty much any guy who sat down on the barstool next to me and called me gorgeous and bought me a drink.”

“Ah-haaa,” Ali drawled, laughing. “So you _are_ a switch hitter. I knew it! I told you.”

“I wasn’t! Seriously. I wasn’t – then.”

“Oh, okay, so I was a couple of months ahead of the curve. I figured you out before you did.”

He’d figured it out long before, actually. Ali was just the first one willing to say it out loud. But he wouldn’t correct her; she was cute when she gloated. “Go ahead, laugh it up.”

She wasn’t really, though. Now she was just smiling fondly at him. “Well, I hope you had fun.”

“I did have fun. I had lots and lots of-… ahem… fun.”

“Yeah.” She took a breath and stopped looking amused. “Listen… we were kids. I really hope I didn’t break your heart or anything.”

“Nah, you didn’t,” he assured. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Uh-huh.” She didn’t look like she believed him.

He shrugged. 

It was silent for a minute. Then she said: “So… do you want to know why else I wrote that story? Where I got the idea?” She sounded wicked now. And he loved it.

“Uh… _do_ I want to know?”

“I think you do. It’s pretty funny. And if you like messing with Daniel, this is _primo_ ammunition.”

He grinned at her. “Spill.”

“Okay, so.” She wriggled in her seat. “Once upon a time, Daniel was over my house, and we were...” she made half a gesture with her hand.

A jerking-off gesture? He made a much clearer, better one himself. With eyebrows. “Hm?”

“Yep.” Laughing. “Well apparently I was very good at it.”

“Eh. B-plus,” he said, wrinkling his nose.

She dropped her jaw.

“I’m kidding. You’re perfect.” What he wouldn’t give to have her _here_ , and be able to pacify her by petting instead.

“Well thank you. Apparently Daniel thought so. He had such a great time that he decided to steal the bottle of lotion I used, so he could jerk off with it later. To like, recapture the magic.”

“Thieving asshole.”

Ali laughed. “Right? Well a couple weeks afterwards he confessed it to me, and I told him…” She had to pause to giggle. “I told him: that’s okay, it’s not even my lotion. That was Johnny’s – he left a bottle of his jerkoff lotion here for me to jerk him off with. So, like… you’ve been using Johnny’s jerkoff lotion.”

“Oh man. That is hilarious.” It was actually _better_ than hilarious; it delighted him in a weirdly primal way. “Did he flip out?”

“Oh yes,” Ali answered. “You have no idea. He yelled at me for even still _having_ it, and for not telling him, said he was so disgusted that he’d been doing that, that he was going to throw it away today and never think about it again, that he couldn’t _believe_ this, he couldn’t believe _me,_ blah blah blah. Okay.” 

Given his reaction to the story, Johnny could totally see it.

“The _really_ funny thing though,” she said, “Is that a while later when I was in his room… I saw it still there. Almost all the way used up. Like… he’d kept it, he was purposely jerking off with _your_ jerkoff lotion, even though he’d been pretending that it was the grossest thing he’d ever heard of. And so… you remember how you were back then, Johnny? Throwing stuff at the girls you liked, pulling pigtails, that kind of thing? That’s how boys _were._ So, I started to think…”

“Holy shit.” He realized suddenly that he was an idiot for never having thought this thought himself. “You thought LaRusso had a thing for me?”

“Yep. And that he was only dating _me_ to, like, annoy you and get your attention. I mean, the way he was always rubbing it in your face that we were together? The way he bugged and bugged and bugged me for sex… and then when we finally did it it wasn’t even _about_ me. I felt like… maybe it was about you.”

“Holy shit,” he said again. If LaRusso had effectively derailed his entire life as a method of _pulling pigtails,_ Johnny was going to kill him. It couldn’t be. It _couldn’t_. “I mean, he definitely reads like a prissy little fairy, but, I always thought that’s just the way he is. You think he really swings both ways?”

She shrugged. “I haven’t seen him in thirty years, but yeah, I did back then. And I was right about _you_ , wasn’t I?”

(It shouldn’t have been a huge leap; he wasn’t hiding it from her. They’d sat at the beach together admiring some of the same guys.).

“I dunno. He and I never had any, like, secret gay moments together.”

“You used to like to manhandle him.”

“I used to like to beat him up,” he corrected.

“No, I’ve _seen_ you beat people up,” she corrected right back. “You liked to manhandle him.” She smiled. “And based on all the pictures your students or whoever keep posting of you guys, I kinda think you still do.”

It was true he knew exactly how LaRusso felt under his hands. He took a second to consider whether he had the same visceral knowledge of any other guys he beat up, but realized pretty fast that LaRusso was the only guy he was touching with any regularity these days. He covered his face a minute (yes, it was warm) and ran his hands over his hair. “Ah, shit.”

Ali laughed delightedly. “ _I knew it!_ ”

“Shut up, Ali. It’s not like that.”

“But it _could_ be. That’s all I was saying. You two… could be… a _thing._ A _hot_ thing, honestly.”

He shook his head – it was all making sense now. _That_ was why LaRusso couldn’t just laugh off the story as an absurdity that didn’t matter. “Do you think he even knows?”

“What, that he used to want you – and maybe still does? Probably not. So listen,” she decided suddenly. “How about this: I’ll take the story down, right this minute, if you tell him.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah,” she said. Sparkling and wicked, biting her lip. “Tell him that I know – that I knew back then. Tell him that _you_ know. Make sure _he_ knows. Really make him _squirm_.”

He had to laugh. “ _Seriously?_ ”

“Mm-hm. I think that the entire time he was dating me, he was obsessed with _you._ And then he dumped me saying _I_ was the one sniffing around other guys. That was my senior year boyfriend - who I walked away from a _very_ cute blond for, by the way.” She fluttered her eyelashes at him, teasing. “So, yeah: I’m still mad. I’ll take the story off the internet for you guys, fine, but I want to know that at _least_ you tortured him a little bit. Can you do that for me?”

He grinned. _Could_ he? “Are you sure?” he asked. “You don’t want to do it yourself?”

“No.” She grinned back. “I want _you_ to tell him. He’ll hate it so much more that way.”

* * *

**TBC.**

**So, there we have it. No fury like a woman scorned, right? Ali’s butthurt because she cashed it in to a guy who wasn’t as invested in her as she deserved. I don’t blame her. (Though I don’t really blame him either; he didn’t know he was doing anything wrong!). And I think it’s reasonably proportionate as far as revenge goes – though I guess it probably _is_ a little petty to still be looking for revenge after all this time haha.**

**I know some of you guys had theories as to the cause of the bee in her bonnet... is this what you thought?**


	16. Chapter 16

**A/N: I should probably note for everybody when this fic takes place. I didn’t have a specific ep in mind, but I’m thinking we diverged from canon somewhere relatively early in S2, when there were two rival dojos but things had not yet escalated and gone off the rails.**

* * *

His phone rang. Unknown number. He picked up anyway. “Daniel LaRusso speaking.”

“Hey Daniel LaRussospeaking, it’s Johnny. I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

He heaved an annoyed sigh. “The good news is obviously you got a new phone, so, congratulations. What’s the bad?”

“I didn’t get a new phone. I’ve had this. This is my apartment phone.”

Daniel blinked. “You have a landline?” He thought of Johnny standing in his kitchen among all his beer cans trying to untangle one of those old coiled cords. Then he shook his head. As if it mattered. Anyway, he wouldn’t untangle it; he’d just use it while it was still in knots.

Johnny ignored him. “The good news is, the story is down. Ali has officially taken the story down, it’s all gone, no one else can ever go on the internet and read about you begging me to fuck you harder. So, be happy about that.”

That was _all_ he had wanted to hear since this horror began… but somehow, from Johnny’s tone, he got the sense that things were still not well. He took a minute to breathe deep and focus on his body. Calm. 

“Hey. You there?”

So much for taking a minute. “Yeah. I’m just-…”

“Yeah. I’ll tell you all about what Ali said some other time, she was _definitely_ pissed at you, we’ll talk about it. But. In the meantime, here’s your bad news. The bad news is that Ali’s thing inspired people - so now there’s _another_ website about us up too. It’s something called a tumblr. I’ve looked at it. It’s less X-rated, so that’s good, but it’s got stuff from our actual current students, pictures and stuff, so that’s bad. It turns out they _are_ watching us – looking for stuff they can take out of context, making up-”

“What? Wait wait – what? A _what_?” Forget breathing _deep_ ; now he could not breathe at all. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s okay, it’s okay, don’t freak. Like I said it’s not _that_ bad, and anyway, I have a plan.”

 _Not that bad._ He had said that about the story too. And the story definitely, definitely was that bad. He swallowed. “Another website. It’s-, there’s, there’s another website?”

“Yup. Get on a computer and I’ll read off the address. You know the drill.”

He made it to his desk and sat down. “Johnny we can’t keep doing this.” Got the computer out, opened up a new tab to explore this new hell.

“Yeah, I know. Don’t worry, I have a plan. You’re not gonna like it, but it’ll take care of this for good.”

He let out a long shaky breath. “URL. Go.”

Johnny read it. He typed it in. It took him a couple tries. When the thing finally opened he flinched from it – the banner on top had headshots of him, and Johnny, and between them the title KARATE HUSBANDS. He read it out loud.

“Yeah, that’s what the thing is called.” Johnny sounded irritated. “Like, if I wanted to be someone’s husband – no offense – but it would absolutely not be you.”

He was skimming through the page. He could see there were posts by different people, so far mainly just gifs pairing his kicks with Johnny’s, or photos of them squared off threateningly on tournament mats. Most of the photos had been defaced somehow – people had added a plate of spaghetti like Lady and the Tramp, or a table with a wedding cake on it, or little hearts in the air between them. (He scrolled fast past that one. What was the _matter_ with people?!). At first he was coping all right.

Then he saw a post of photographs _not_ at karate. Photographs of a parking lot – him and Johnny, by the dumpster. “What the hell,” he breathed.

“What, the ones from the other day? Yeah. At least they photocropped out the garbage, right?”

It was true – the parking lot was bare; the garbage was gone. But someone had added captions. They’d posted a series of three pictures. The first was himself on his hands and knees, head bowed, with Johnny standing over him. (The picture was actually taken while he was _throwing up._ Apparently they had photoshopped out the vomit too.). **_YOU’VE BEEN A BAD BOY,_** the caption said. “What the _hell._ ”

Then, himself kneeling up, reaching with one hand into both of Johnny’s. **_IM SORRY DADDY._** “What the _hell_ ,” he said, again. With those words pasted on top it _did_ look like he was begging for some kind of blessing, but that was ridiculous. “I was _handing you a piece of paper,_ ” he snarled. “What the hell is this!”

In the last picture, they were standing close and Johnny appeared to be cradling his cheek. **_OK SWEETNESS I FORGIVE YOU._** “I- I- I was talking on the _phone_!”

Johnny huffed. “You don’t have to tell _me,_ man, I was there.” He didn’t sound overly perturbed by this, but at least he wasn’t really joining in. “I made them all try to explain why the hell this is funny – it’s not, like, _mean_ enough to be funny, you know? And it doesn’t make any sense. But they think it’s hilarious.”

He seized on the most problematic word. “Them _all?_ What do you mean – _who_ is in on this?”

“Uh, pretty much everybody. Both dojos. They’re all laughing at it – at _us_. I’m going to put a stop to it.”

That sounded… promising? But also dangerous. “What are you going to do?”

Johnny cleared his throat. “ _We_. We are going to call a meeting, all of us together. Your dojo is good; it’s got that stage we can stand on. Wear your gi. Be all warmed up and ready to go.”

He swallowed. “What are we going to do – fight them? We can’t fight them. They’re our students. No matter what they do, we can’t just-”

“ _LaRusso_ ,” he snapped. Daniel shut up. “You called me _the biggest bully in high school,_ do you remember that?”

Not exactly, but it seemed like something he would say. “You _were_.”

“So now we’ve got a bunch of high schoolers we want to push around, right? Trust me that I know how to do that.”

“What you did to me was different.” _Beating me up. Pantsing me. Putting pie on my seat. Smearing whatever the hell that was in my hair and telling me it was-._ But he wasn’t about to remind Johnny of how thoroughly he’d been tormented and how helpless he was to stop it. “It was a simpler time,” he said finally. “Now, the kids, all this cyber stuff? It’s a whole new world.”

“Yeah, but some things will never change. One of my girls was getting text blasts, internet posts telling her to kill herself, you name it. Wanna know how she put a stop to it?”

“Not really.”

“Good old front wedgie,” he said, like he was reminiscing. “In front of everyone she knew.”

“I… don’t even know what that is. Now can we please-”

“ _You don’t know what that is?_ ” Johnny almost shrieked. “Are you serious? I was falling down on the job, man! I’ll have to show you sometime. Better late than never.”

“Yeah yeah, very funny.”

“See – it _is_ funny, and I get that and you don’t. Which is why I know how to deal with these people.” Johnny sounded very, very certain. “We call a meeting, all the kids together, and I _promise_ , I will make them knock it off. Without hurting any of them.”

Was he seriously going to rely on a promise from Johnny Lawrence? A promise rooted in his long experience of making people miserable?

Did he have any better ideas?

His eyes fell on the next post. _GI BELT BONDAGE?? LOLOLOL!_

He closed the whole computer. “Fine,” he spat. “Do whatever you want. Wedgie every single one of them if you have to, my kids and yours, I won’t get in the way. This needs to stop.”

* * *

TBC.

***Narrator voice*: Johnny did not, in fact, give wedgies to every single one of the students. He had something else in mind.**

Okay, I’m thinking there are probably about 3 parts left, but I want to have them all worked out before I start posting. It’s probably going to take me a couple of days to be ready, sorry. Stay tuned…


	17. Chapter 17

**A/N: It felt really good to write a world where rival kids’ karate clubs _didn’t_ degenerate into full-scale gang war, ngl. And where Robby and Miguel can be in the same space without disaster.**

* * *

The Cobra Kai kids came on time, together, enough of them to suggest not just a carpool but a caravan. They filed into the yard of Miyagi-do and joined the class. Far outnumbering it, which made Daniel a little uneasy, but he was trying not to think that way. Rivalry was one thing, but he didn’t want the kids to be _enemies_. Just look where that ended up.

That thought made him send a glare over to the guy next to him. “I’m warning you, Johnny.” He didn’t need to say any more than that; he’d been issuing progressively more colorful threats and warnings for the past two days. Johnny hadn’t told him what the plan was, only that he _had_ one, and out of desperation Daniel was going to have to just step back and trust him.

(…About as far as he could throw him. The _minute_ Johnny stepped out of line he was going to jump in and put a stop to it. He was dressed and warm.).

“ _Quiet down!”_ Johnny shouted, and the kids got quiet. “Welcome to the first and hopefully only joint practice of Cobra Kai and Miyagi-do.”

That quickly, the students rebelled. Hands rose with questions, everyone was murmuring and Robby, the nearest Miyagi-do student, was hissing at him: “Mr. LaRusso? What is this?”

“ _Quiet_!” Johnny pointed into the crowd and called on someone. “Ass Face.”

Ass Face?

The boy actually answered to that. “Sensei, can we unflinch them? You don’t let anyone else take class without being unflinched.”

Unflinched?

Johnny shifted. “Fair enough. Ass Face raises a good point. How many of you people have never been punched in the face?”

Two of Daniel’s students raised their hands timidly.

The punk in the mohawk, right up front, cracked his knuckles and grinned.

 _Whoa_. Daniel suddenly had an idea what this exercise might entail and obviously he was not going to let it happen. The timid ones weren’t the problem here anyway. “Johnny,” he hissed. “What the hell are you doing?”

Johnny turned and looked at him for a long moment. Then sighed. “Fine.” He faced the class again. “You pussies are lucky: we are not going to unflinch you today. But, consider it a homework assignment.” He paced the platform and then told the class: “Now. You are all part of the same class for the moment because we all have a joint problem right now. And that problem is: _you._ _are. screwing_. _around_!”

Ah, this was better. Now it was starting. Daniel wasn’t convinced that bellowing at the kids like a drill sergeant would do the trick, but it was better than nothing and it was definitely more than he was able to do himself.

“Instead of training,” Johnny elaborated, “You’ve all been wasting your time laughing about some kind of gay hookup between me and Sensei LaRusso over here.”

Okay, that was pretty direct. Daniel tried not to flinch. He couldn’t look at Sam. Instead though, he accidentally made eye contact with the kid under that mohawk (the damn thing was an attention magnet; it was not his fault) and watched a knowing smile break out. Mohawk kid turned to the kid next to him smirked; that kid gave Daniel an asshole smile too.

He did his best not to feel cornered or swallow visibly or do _any_ of the things that would put blood in the water. He knew as well as Johnny did, if from the other end, how these things worked. 

“I got news for you loser virgins,” Johnny went on. “Gay hookups are not supposed to be funny. If the guy is laughing at you, you are doing it wrong. I’m speaking from experience here.”

What? _What?_ He was sure he’d hallucinated that – and clearly he wasn’t the only one. The kids were looking at each other with that same question in their faces.

“That’s right, you heard me,” Johnny said, over the murmurs. Loud and matter-of-fact and maybe a little impatient, even. “I’ve been playing for both teams since before any of you people were born. Well- maybe not you, Chubs,” he added, aside, to an older student Daniel hadn’t previously noticed. He stared stupidly at the guy. Stared stupidly as Johnny jumped down off the stage to prowl the rows and loom over people threateningly. “And I don’t see why it would be funny.”

This was... insane. Johnny Lawrence was _coming out_? That couldn’t be. He must be just pretending. He was _pretending_ to come out, to a bunch of obnoxious teenagers, in order to _stop_ them from making fun? It was crazy.

But it was working. He watched in amazement as the kids subsided. No longer smirking and whispering, no longer buzzing with malicious amusement, no longer hyenas by a wounded animal. They looked around uncertainly, or looked down to the ground, shuffled their feet.

“Miss Robinson. Do _you_ think it’s funny?”

“No, Sensei!”

“Ass Face. How about you?”

“No, Sensei?”

“LaRusso – _Miss_ LaRusso?”

Daniel started forward at the sound of his name, but it was Sam who’d been addressed. “No, Sensei.”

(Well, good. He might not like her addressing this asshole as _sensei,_ but at least nobody would leave here thinking his daughter was less enlightened than someone called Ass Face.).

Johnny strode back to the stage and jumped up. “All right. So. About me and LaRusso,” he announced. And Daniel went immediately tense all over. Now what? Couldn’t he just shame everybody individually and send them all home? What more was there to say?

“We have known each other more than thirty years. We knew each other back when there were gang showers in high school.” _What the hell?_ “Some of you,” he added, “Are very lucky that that’s no longer a thing; you are way too nerdy and scrawny to survive in there. Yes, I’m talking to you. And you… _definitely_ you…” Pointing people out individually.

Dear God. Daniel finally managed to step in. “Johnny.”

“What? They are,” he insisted. Then cleared his throat and got back on topic. “Anyway. Even though we were running around each other naked every day, LaRusso is part of a long list of guys in this town that I have _not_ hooked up with. And he’s no different from the rest of em. Robby Keene! Sam LaRusso!” Barking, out of nowhere. “Over there!” He pointed, to a spot at the far side of the yard, by the fence.

“What did _they_ do?” Daniel protested. “What are you doing to them?”

“Relax,” Johnny said to him, without taking his eyes off the class. “I’m not making them fight to the death or anything. No wedgies either.”

After a couple of uncertain glances all around - and a look to Daniel, which he answered with a nod and prayed not to regret it - Sam and Robby headed over where they’d been told. 

Johnny shifted. “Eh… all right: Diaz, you too.” Diaz frowned, but followed.

“You three,” Johnny called, “Face the fence and do not turn around until I tell you. For the rest of you guys…”

Daniel was standing _ready,_ on high alert because an unpredictable Johnny was _dangerous_ and right now he had exactly zero idea what the guy was up to.

“The idea of me with LaRusso is just not that exciting. I will prove it. Watch.” Before he could process where this was going, Johnny stepped up to him and grabbed his belt and collar as if for a sweep. Said very quietly: “Don’t fight.” And kissed him.

* * *

He stood in a dry, dead liplock, no moving and no tongue, just stood pressed mouth to mouth with the guy for five (count ‘em) seconds.

He let go and stepped back. LaRusso was standing wide-eyed, apparently too shellshocked to react (beyond a tiny reflexive jerk in the first moment, which Johnny had easily overpowered). He faced the class. The way he usually did with a new move, he continued: “Once again - here it is from another angle.” And he moved LaRusso by the shoulders to his other side, faced him, and did it again.

It was risky, because if the guy freaked it would be _funny,_ and then the kids would never stop. (And neither would he. He already had a dozen hilarious ideas about what to do.). But Johnny was _pretty sure_ LaRusso was going to freeze rather than freak, and anyway he’d never had a problem taking risks. So he did it – solid grips, head tilted minutely, motionless as if they were posing for a picture. As kisses go it was pretty damn sterile and inoffensive, and after a short few seconds he let go again.

They faced the class. “So now you know,” Johnny droned, like he was bored, “It’s not that cool. He doesn’t even taste good. Are we done thinking it’s hilarious?”

Some answered, some nodded, some still looked at the ground. _Good._

“ _I said: class, are we done?_ ”

That time, pretty much everyone straightened up and yelled _Yes Sensei!_ back to him.

He turned to LaRusso. “You’re up, man.”

LaRusso looked the kids over. Cleared his throat. “Are we done.”

Half of them tried _Yes Sensei_ again, some went with _Yes Mr. LaRusso,_ and several just said _Yes._ Still, they seemed to have gotten the message.

Johnny took over once more to finish the job. “Good. So if anyone starts wasting time with this shit again,” he said, “I am going to be pissed off. And I am going to think you have too much spare time on your hands, and I’m going to talk to your parents about bringing you to extra conditioning classes. That goes for LaRusso’s people too,” he added. “You will not like these classes. I’ll have you doing grip exercises until you are not capable of typing. Because the next tournament will be here sooner than you know it, and we don’t want ourselves embarrassed by other dojos because everyone here was too busy screwing around to focus on their training. _Are we clear_?”

“ _Yes, Sensei_!” 

“Good. You guys are all dismissed.” He remembered, suddenly, the three kids he’d excused from watching, on grounds that it would be just too damn weird. “Keene, Diaz, Miss LaRusso,” he called. “You guys too.”

He watched the kids fall out of their lines and start milling around, gravitating towards their friends, chattering like the chatterboxes they all were. He watched to see whether anyone needed to be stomped on… but he didn’t see even a hint of attitude from anywhere. Awesome.

And then, even better, Miguel provided a distraction. “Guys,” he said, loud, “I think I just got, like… adopted.”

He turned and opened his arms to Robby for a hug, clowning, which of course resulted in an impromptu sparring session with other kids crowding around to call points and egg them on. It seemed to be mostly, if not totally, in fun.

With everyone’s attention occupied it seemed a safe time to look over at LaRusso and say something. “Once everybody goes let’s head inside a minute – I need to talk to you.”

LaRusso gave him eyebrows. He looked pretty pissed off. “You think?”

If he was this pissed off _already_ … he’d better buckle up.

* * *

**TBC.**

**I think that the only reason this strategy occurred to Johnny is that Ali just talked about his M/M hookups the other day, with approval. So it went from some random information about himself stored in the junk drawer of his brain, to something cool to put out on a shelf.**

**Okay, so, next they’re getting behind closed doors together. Yay! We are almost to the end. I’m thinking just one more part, probably.**

**Also, in case anyone wants to say hello to me somewhere: I am on tumblr now and discord! And I do not know how to use either lol. My handle is KickAndTell, stolen from this story.**


	18. Chapter 18

Once they were inside, before he could even kill Johnny for any of that, Daniel had to satisfy his curiosity first. “Was that _true_?”

“What, that you taste bad? No, I didn’t taste anything. I just didn’t want em to get any ideas.”

“No- not-.” He heaved a big sigh when he saw that Johnny was screwing around. “Come on.”

Johnny shrugged. “Yeah, it’s true.”

“That you’re bisexual?” There – let him misinterpret _that_.

But it turned out he still kind of could. “Don’t be trying to set me up with any of your lame bisexual friends,” he said, “I’m not looking for dudes to date. I just like to bang em sometimes, that’s all.”

He didn’t know what to say to that, other than to say stupidly: “Oh… okay.” But that sounded too casual, almost like-… So he added: “I don’t. I’ve never.”

“Yeah, I figured.” Shrugging like none of this mattered. It was no wonder, Daniel realized suddenly, that he had failed to be all the way scandalized by Ali’s story. “Sorry I went for it out there without asking.”

“Yeah.” He tried to match the tone. “If you asked I wouldn’t have let you.” _I wouldn’t have let you kiss me._ He shook his head. Still couldn’t compute. Still felt that unforgiving pressure against his mouth. “Great. I’m fifty years old and I just had my first gay kiss.” When he said that out loud, he felt like he had to express some outrage – even though he was still too numb to actually feel much. “I cannot _believe_ you did that. Jesus. I need a drink.”

“C’mon – that wasn’t a kiss, that was a performance.” He snorted. “Please tell me that’s not what you think kissing is supposed to look like. No _wonder_ Ali had such a bad time.”

“You’re an ass, Johnny.”

“Yeah, I know.” Johnny turned weirdly shy all of a sudden. “Hey – listen. I have something for you.” He went into his jacket pocket. “Catch.”

* * *

Maybe he was getting soft, or maybe seeing Ali had just put him in a good mood that lasted days, but he was taking this much easier than he had planned. In the end he tossed LaRusso a bottle of lotion without saying anything (it was the same kind; he still used the same kind after all these years), and let him make the first move himself.

LaRusso stared at it. “What- what is this?”

“You know what it is.”

LaRusso looked up at him, eyes wide. Bambi in crosshairs.

“Ali told me about how you kept it. And used it.”

“Uh-. I-.” He made one attempt to get angry and brazen it out. “Yeah, okay, so I stole your lotion once _in the eighties,_ Jesus, will you get over it? I’m sorry, okay? What, do I owe you a new bottle?”

“Would you cool it?”

“Don’t tell me to cool it,” he snarled. “After, after you just _kissed me_ in front of everyone we know.”

Okay, so apparently the shock was starting to wear off now, and here came the freakout. “I already told you,” Johnny said, “I didn’t kiss you.” He was trying to be nice. Nice! He was trying _so hard_ to be nice, keeping his promise to Ali as nicely as humanly possible… but LaRusso as always was not satisfied.

“Oh, _please._ ” He waved the lotion around. “And what’s _this_ about? Why would you throw this in my face?”

“I threw it in your _hand_ , not your face,” he said, which was true. “I just thought it might be less awkward that way than actually _talking_ about what Ali told me.”

“About what-…?” He shook his head. Placed the lotion on a table of his karate artifacts, carefully, as if it was taking all the control he had not to start smashing things. “What the hell did Ali tell you?”

He gave eyebrows – a warning. _Do you really want to go there?_

But LaRusso continued to play dumb. “Johnny. Seriously. What did she tell you, what the hell did she-…? Tell me what she said. Come on – you know I don’t like people talking about me behind my back, okay? Tell me what she said.”

Well, okay. If he was asking for it… “That you were thinking of me while your dick was in your hand,” he said bluntly. “Or in other people. Which might explain why she’s still mad at you.”

“That I was-… wait-… _what_?” He was beet red, suddenly. Johnny had had no idea that he could flush like that.

“And might also explain why you were always such a pain in my ass. You couldn’t leave me alone.” He popped eyebrows, posed a little. Teasing. “You wanted a piece. I get it. I don’t blame you.”

Now LaRusso was breathing hard – an inch away from losing it. Which was as irresistible as ever. 

So, he gave the last push to send him over. “I’m right here, man. Come and get it.” He pursed his lips in an air-kiss.

And then it was _on_.

* * *

Maybe because it was his own dojo this time, LaRusso didn’t try to throw him into any walls. He just launched an endless volley of strikes at close distance, fast and almost frantic, snarling with rage (or panic. Hard to tell.).

He wasn’t fighting very smart, and since Johnny was only trying to defend and not land anything of his own, it was no trouble to contain it. The distance was close enough for him to eventually trap an arm and pull the guy in all the way. He noticed, now that he was looking for it, that the proximity was nice, that the body against him felt right, smelled good.

Ugh. He could hear Ali smug in his ear. _I figured you out before you did._

“Hey,” he said, “Relax. I didn’t notice either, until Ali pointed it out the other night. Did you really not know?”

Even when he stopped struggling LaRusso stood totally tense. “Know what?” he insisted.

Johnny pretended that it was a question instead of a furious denial. “Just that there might have been some chemistry, back then,” he said casually. No mocking. “But in school I was too busy hating your guts, so, it didn’t cross my mind.” _And then afterwards I was too busy getting head from strangers to give you any thought_.

It was too bad, really; that Bambi-in-crosshairs look would probably have revved his engine in the right context.

LaRusso squirmed, and seemed to be done trying to hit him, so he let go.

“Johnny. I _swear_ to you.” His voice was unsteady. And he never actually came up with anything to swear.

“Uh huh.” It was going to bug him, now. Like unfinished business – unless he finished it. “I mean, there’s definitely some chemistry _now_ ,” he said. “I dare you to deny it.”

“I, I _totally_ deny it, okay?”

He sounded like he was about thirteen, and it made Johnny argue back just as childishly. “I dare you to deny it _after I kiss you._ ”

LaRusso backed up a step. “You already kissed me.” He seemed afraid. Afraid now – while before, before being clued in, he hadn’t been. That pretty much said it all.

Still: it was time to know. “I _didn’t_ kiss you before,” Johnny insisted quietly, following him across the floor. “I’m not going to explain it again, man.” He backed him up into some table thing, and took another step to that LaRusso basically sat down on it. “I’m just going to show you. That’s all.”

He held LaRusso by the face to keep him still. He ran his free hand all up and down his body – shoulders and chest and stomach, all the usual targets – and laughed when LaRusso tensed and pulled away. “You know you don’t flinch that hard when I hit you.”

He leaned in. “Come on,” he said against the tight lips. “Right now your daughter’s at home telling your wife I kissed you, so we might as well make it true. Open that annoying mouth of yours - I’m coming in.”

* * *

Somehow the idea of Amanda already knowing about this, before it happened, was a game-changer. Suddenly there was nothing to worry about – nothing was about to happen right now, because whatever was going to happen, already had. He stopped desperately pressing his mouth closed, and the _second_ he did Johnny was on him.

In him. This was _not_ like before; this was hard wet tongue thrusting straight into his mouth as if to prove a point. This was not like Amanda or any of the girls before her, even at their roughest and most enthusiastic. This was coming in so hard it was interfering with his balance, so instinctively he tilted his head a little, shifted his hips to fit them better together. Johnny moved with him to fit better still.

Immediately, once he started cooperating, it changed. Now it wasn’t just a full frontal assault on his mouth - now it was lips sucking at him, a tongue sparring playfully with his. (Well, what was he going to do, just _let it happen_ unanswered?). Now, it was a kiss.

Johnny’s low throaty laugh vibrated through him and he knew exactly what was so funny: yes, okay, they were good at this together. But that didn’t mean he would concede there was _chemistry_ or anything like it. He pulled back just far enough to say: “Shut up, asshole” and then bit the lip that was still brushing against him. 

A big hand tightened on the back of his head and pulled him in again. Whoops, that felt good. He said _Mmn_ aloud, and was mortified until Johnny made the sound right back at him, and shifted his arms to hold him closer. And kept kissing.

All right: he wouldn’t lie to himself; he _liked_ the feel of Johnny’s tongue pushing around inside his mouth while they grabbed at each other. It was rough and alien and new... but it still felt somehow natural, like he _got it_ , an exercise he nailed on the first try _._ He had no real plans to stop, and it might have gone on forever except-…

A loud _click –_ the pop of plastic. The old familiar smell of _that lotion_ washed over him and he gasped hard into Johnny’s mouth.

* * *

Afterwards, when they finally separated, LaRusso looked like someone had beat him up and fucked him out and then done it all again. His mouth was wet and swollen, his pupils blown, and there was a red patch just inside his collar that before long was going to resolve itself into a big hand-shaped bruise at the base of his neck.

Johnny didn’t know if he looked any better himself. Judging by the critical look LaRusso was giving him as he came down, he doubted it. 

LaRusso hadn’t started freaking out yet, and maybe he wouldn’t if he got some assurance. “There – okay,” Johnny said, still a little out of breath but making his very best attempt at casual. “So now we know.” He backed off, shrugged, straightened his clothes and hair in the reflection off one of LaRusso’s picture frames. Telegraphed with his entire body that this was _no big deal_.

LaRusso started organizing himself too. All he said was: “Yeah.” Mildly sarcastic, _very_ aggrieved. Very LaRusso.

It was sort of endearing, at this point. (Though Johnny still was _not_ about to cuddle him, not for anything, not even for Ali.). He just gave a smile - not a mean one. “I guess the karate perv really did have our number.”

* * *

**The End!**

**Thank you guys all for coming with me on this wild ride – and special thanks to everybody who got out to push by giving ideas! This would have just been a teeny little one-shot without your help.**

**I deliberately didn’t specify what exactly happened between them at the end there, so if you want to imagine that they just made out like good little boys you can. I personally think it went a little further, but, what do I know.**

**I did write a scene that takes place after this is all over, where Daniel asks Johnny out for a drink in order to grill him about his sexual history because now he’s curious. I didn’t need it to finish off the fic itself, but maybe sometime I’ll put it up as a one-shot.**

**I _am_ going to post Ali’s fic, so stay tuned :-)**


	19. Chapter 19

**Ok you are my last hope. I stupidly didnt save the sensei fic and I asked around and nobody else did either. Did you?**

**_Uh no obviously not, I’m not insane and perverted. Who would save it?_ **

**Shit so the only surviving copy is senseis.**

**_Yeah but that’s not even a full copy anymore, he threw away the first couple pages bc he didn’t like reading about himself losing the match lol._ **

**Whatever, no one cares about that. Did he throw the cuddling away too? I kinda hope so, bc otherwise we’re gonna have to suspect…**

**_Hawk omg don’t start, he will kill us all and me first._ **

**I know I know I know. Im kidding. I just want the good part. Can u get it for me? Take pics on your phone while he’s passed out or sthing.**

**_If you post it anywhere he will KILL us._ **

**No posting. Personal use only, promise.**

**_UGHGHGHGHGH I don’t want to hear about your personal use omg._ **

**Stop being such a pussy and send me the pictures.**

* * *

**Hey. Pictures?**

* * *

**Hey. Pics yet?**

* * *

**PICS DIAZ GODDAMN IT HE DRINKS EVERY NIGHT JUST SNEAK OVER THERE YOU HAVE A KEY.**

* * *

**_Ok ok here you go. Pics incoming. This is what he has:_ **

* * *

* * *

“Wait – _what?_ ”

“Yep.”

His pants are being pulled down. Yanked, rough, over his hips and down to his knees, which he moves so the pants can come off all the way. Fooling around with Johnny Lawrence is one thing – insane and dangerous and unexpectedly hot, but… “Wait a second – are you nuts? – we’re not doing _that_.”

“Yes we are.” Underwear next. Then Johnny nudges his legs apart.

“Whoa whoa I’m not gonna- _hey_!” He flinches away from something _touching_ him.

“Relax, moron – I’m just putting vaseline. I’m not going to fuck you dry. I don’t hate you _that_ much.”

“Goddamn it, Johnny, you’re not going to fuck me at all.” Even as he says it he knows it’s not true; the sticky poking has stopped but Johnny’s other hand is gripping his hip hard.

“Yes I am. Don’t be chicken. You ready?”

“No, okay?” he snaps. “Do I look ready to you?”

Johnny gives him a slap on the ass. (His bare, greased, spread ass.). It’s _loud_ in the empty gym. “I mean… yeah, pretty much you do.”

* * *

When something big and blunt actually presses against his asshole, he panics. “Wait wait wait, hold on, no no no not yet-,” he babbles, but then pain _spears_ up through him and he yells _AAH-_ at the top of his lungs.

He snaps his mouth closed and goes stiff all over, trying to breathe over this sharp, terrifying, brand spanking new flavor of pain he never even knew existed. _Up my ass. That’s up my ass,_ he tells himself clearly, in an effort to keep a handle on what the hell is going on. Johnny’s close to him, breathing in his ear. Not moving – waiting.

But the pain is still getting worse. “It hurts, man no, it hurts a lot, don’t do it,” he gasps out finally. His pride doesn’t say a word about not begging; it hurts that much.

“Yeah, okay.” The voice is _right by_ his ear, with him, reassuring. “I’m barely in at all, but okay. You need more lube or something?”

“Yeah – something.” It’s throbbing now, stabbing. Still unbearable. “Nuh-uh. I can’t. _Help._ ”

“Okay, okay. I’m gonna take it out – but you have to relax, okay? Come on. Relax.”

He definitely had vague ideas that you were supposed to relax for this, but that’s a laugh. His entire body is tight with the effort of enduring it. (Who the hell does this for _fun_?). He huffs “Yeah, I… don’t think that’s happening. Just g’ahead. Hurry.”

“Kay.” A hand covers his mouth just before a (slightly less unendurable) pain spikes up again. He yelps a little and collapses.

(And his dick twitches, because that muffled yelp was a sexy sound. What is the matter with him.)

“Jesus Christ,” he says, laying there shaking. Wondering, for some reason: did that count? Did they just technically _do it_?

Turns out not to matter though, because from behind him he hears: “Hold on – I’m putting more vaseline and trying again.”

“ _What?_ ” The spearing pain is gone but he still feels burned and buzzing down there, he’s clenching on nothing, can’t even control himself. “Come on, you gotta be kidding,” he says, as he drags himself up to his hands and knees again.

“Practice makes perfect, right?”

“That _hurt_.”

“Just relax. It won’t if you relax.” Something sticky is touching him, and he holds still and holds his breath and _here it comes._ “…People say.”

“ _MMMMMN!”_ This time he keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t scream, but he does sort of yell in his throat because he feels it _all_ this time, feels his body opening up and something hard pushing up inside him. _Sliding_ in. Deep.

It seems to slide forever and every inch aches more. He breaks into a sweat.

Finally, _finally_ it stops moving. “Wow – look at that.” Delighted and admiring. “I’m all the way in. You took it like a champ.”

His mind flashes to the tournament board over their heads but he’s not going to look up; he’s pretty occupied right now. There is something jammed so, so far up his ass, wedged all the way up in his stomach it feels like, cramping. “You’re killing me, man,” he complains. It’s not like before, no more sharp pain, but still. This can’t be something anyone does for fun.

“Nah, you’re okay, look at you.” Hands stroke down his back a moment, before coming to rest at his hips and starting to grip. “Tight as hell, but you’re okay. I’m gonna fuck you now, aright?”

He laughs but he can hear how desperate it sounds. “Like you haven’t been? Or what the hell am I feeling back there?”

“No, I mean… like this.” 

And then he gets a real shock: when the thing crammed up inside him starts to slide _out,_ it turns out to be the best feeling he can remember feeling, ever, in his life. It’s relief as the pressure inside his guts lessens, sure, but also, the slide itself feels bizarre and amazing and he’s immediately addicted. But-

“There we go,” Johnny says, and reverses direction.

“ _Ow!_ ”

Johnny pauses. “Still?”

“Yeah _._ Going in,” he clarifies. “Out… out’s okay.” He tries to sound casual.

It seems like Johnny understands him; as he pulls out he teases: “Oh, it’s _okay,_ is it?”

“Yeah, all right, it’s fucking great,” he admits fast and irritable. “What do you want me to say.”

Johnny starts pumping for real now, slow and steady. “I dunno, how about: _You’re the best, Johnny, absolute best on the planet and I'll never ever doubt-_ ”

“Didn’t we just settle that like an hour ago? Bracket’s right up there,” his mouth says, without his permission. Then in the same breath he begs: “Okay no I’m kidding, I’m kidding aright, I’m kidding, kidding, man please.”

Johnny snaps his hips once, which makes him yelp. “You are cruising for a bruising, LaRusso.”

But the warning is playful, and the sound of his own name, for some reason, drives home exactly what he’s doing and who with. He can’t _believe_ the size of his own balls. “Oooh, I’m scared,” he teases back. He’s not, even a little bit. What he _is_ is turned on – actually all the way turned on. Johnny speeds up and it gets harder to tell the in from the out – it _all_ feels good now, and it all hurts. It’s kind of too much. But it’s not more than he can handle. He is definitely going to try and get off. “Hey asshole,” he grunts at last, “Where’s my reacharound?”

Johnny laughs at that. Holds his hips and slams in extra-brutally a couple of times, hard enough to jar his whole body and move him against the mat. “You greedy little shit,” he pants. “Fine. _Fine._ ” He slows the pace, and reaches around to fumble for Daniel’s dick.

He’s graceless and uncoordinated though, and Daniel needs him to get it _right._ He shifts to balance himself and get a free hand, so he can reach down to show. “Not so jerky,” he orders. “Ease up. I got a lot going on.”

Johnny follows directions fairly well, and it’s definitely good to have his dick stroked while that aching fullness keeps coming, and coming, and coming. But he finds he misses the grips at his hips, and those (painful, okay, but so what) couple of unbelievably hardcore seconds.

“Hey, you know what?” he says. “I’ll do that. You just worry about-. Fucking.” He pauses a second before actually saying it. But he does.

Johnny laughs breathlessly. “Sounds good, I got a lot going on too. How’s this?” He puts both hands back where they were and starts going hard.

“Yeah – yeah that’s good, that’s it,” he says. Once or twice Johnny grazes something inside him that feels a lot like the Right Idea, and it makes him curse and squirm but he can’t figure out what about the depth or angle or whatever is doing it so he can’t get it to happen reliably.

Still, overall it’s going pretty great for a first try. Now that he’s got the hang of it he experiments a little – shifts back and kneels upright, hands off the mat. One’s still busy between his legs but with the other he reaches up, back over his shoulder, to find Johnny’s neck and grab at him.

The angle’s a little different and his own weight is now forcing him down, forcing _deeper,_ and he hears _holy shit LaRusso_ in his ear. He looks around a second at the empty auditorium and has a flash of memory of the fans, the cheering, as he dug deep and stood to finish his fight. A flash of imagination of that same crowd, that same cheering as he digs deep for this…

For some reason that thought pushes all his buttons, and now he wants _more_. “Yeah,” he gasps. “Now hard as you can, Johnny, let’s go.” He sits down hard himself, grinding, but that stabs pain up into his belly and that’s not what he’s looking for. The only way to get what he wants is from the guy behind him. “Do it, pound the shit out of me, come on,” he says. (Thinks of the Cobra Kai guys standing in his corner. _Finish him._ Oh _god,_ that thought is frightening and too hot to handle. He shies away from it.). “Hard as you can. _Do it!_ Try and wreck me. I know you want to.”

“Yeah- yeah, I’ll fucking wreck you all right. Fuck you up til you scream. How’s this?” Johnny surges forward to bend him over again and drives in with all the fury he’s hoping for. “Fuck – oh man I’m almost-.” For a little bit he really gets what he wants: Johnny holds him _hard_ and fucks him harder, slamming his hips so powerfully that Daniel can’t even touch his cock because he has to brace both hands against the floor. The friction _burns_ and he’s getting wrecked and he snarls _yes_ and _come on_ because it feels like it might get him there by itself… but Johnny finishes a little too early and stops bulldozing and he has to readjust and get himself over the line by hand instead. 

It’s still incredibly good – coming with something jammed up his ass is a first and it’s a wow. Then as he’s coming he’s spazzing all over the place and Johnny slides out of him, and _that_ is amazing too and perfectly timed as the last of his orgasm tapers off.

“Holy shit,” he hears, and realizes he’s been panting it for probably the last half a minute.

He looks up and there’s the All-Valley board with their names on it and all he can do is laugh.

* * *

Johnny comes back down to earth spooned around Daniel Fucking LaRusso, who is at least quiet for once in his irritating life, and who is shivering.

“You cold?” he says. There are no blankets or anything, because they’re lying in the middle of the gym on tournament mats, which he still can’t really believe, but he’s got plenty of body heat to go round. He shifts to press them closer together.

That bumps them hips to hips, and LaRusso tenses for a second. “Johnny… my ass hurts.” It’s a groan with a laugh underneath. 

“Yeah, well, so does my face.”

LaRusso rolls onto his back, but bridges and scoots efficiently so that they stay pressed up close together the whole time. (There is something to be said for fooling around with a fighter who knows how to move.). “Aww,” he teases. “You need me to kiss it better?” And he reaches up to Johnny’s cheek, faking tender, and makes smooching noises.

Johnny touches him back, with the arm he’s not lying on, stroking his jaw just as tenderly. “Hey, as long as you don’t ask me to do the same.” With eyebrows.

He waits until LaRusso puts two and two together. “Oh my god!” LaRusso knocks his hand away and recoils – laughing, but definitely actually shocked. “You’re sick, man, you’re really sick.”

Johnny isn’t going to let him get away with that. “Me? You’re the one who just got off from getting cornholed,” he points out, easily. Petting up and down the kid’s arm, to show he doesn’t mean any harm, and decides to retreat a step too. “Or at least – _while_ getting cornholed. How do I know what actually got you off in the end.”

“Definitely not getting cornholed,” LaRusso argues. “I told you, it’s a killer.”

“Mm.” He keeps stroking. “Well, you were good at it. That was hot.”

“Yeah.” LaRusso tilts his head to look up at him squarely. “Hey: you’re not gonna tell anybody – are you?”

“Tell anybody?” Johnny gives him eyebrows. “Why, so I can ruin both our lives and send myself to jail? No thanks.”

“Jail? Come on,” LaRusso protests. “I let you.”

“Yeah? Good. Cause people woulda thought I made you, what with all the _no no, ow, I can’t._ ”

“Pssh.” LaRusso shakes his head, exhaustedly. “You couldn’t make me if you tried.”

Johnny’s arms tighten around him, a show of strength. “Yeah?” Even now they can’t stop pushing each other. 

“Yeah. I mean…” LaRusso settles back down. Not looking him in the face anymore, he mumbles: “It might be kind of hot though. If you tried.”

Johnny laughs softly. “You’re really something, man.”

“I’m just saying.” LaRusso shrugs. “But it has to be on a bed or something next time though. I mean, look at us, we’re lying in probably a hundred guys’ foot-sweat. This is the worst.”

Johnny shrugs back. He spends so much time in the dojo that the smell of mat doesn’t even register with him. “Eh. I already kind of took a snooze in it today, so…”

“Aw, don’t worry about that,” LaRusso assures him fast. Snuggling. “I did my share of rolling around down here too.”

Johnny holds him. “How’s your knee?”

“Hurts a little less than my ass, so. I think I’m gonna be okay.”

“You really are something.” Johnny bends to kiss him. Covers the knee with his hand gently, as if touch could do any good at this point.

“You know it.” LaRusso kisses back, as if it did.

* * *

**THE END.**

* * *

* * *

**All done! You guys are awesome, thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed!**

**(Also, I hope no PSA is needed here, but just in case: This is not how consent actually works, people. You can't just bulldoze over a refusal and retroactively make it okay by being good at whatever you're doing, even if you think the refusal seems kinda half-hearted. But, that's what fiction is for!)**


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